Crosswords8 mins ago
ashes to ashes
i recently heard the line 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust' in a brilliant film called 'Michael Collins' and i've obviously also heard it famously said in 'Gladiator' by Proximo i think it was. Anyway i was wondering where this line comes from? i would guess that it is possibly from a prayer? and if so which one and how does the rest of it go? i dont know that much about religeon but were many of the prayers we have today used as far back as roman times (though i presume in latin). So in short where does this line come from?
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.It is part of the burial service. I will let one of the prots track it down. The Romans - catholics that is - say something like : Dust thou are and to dust thou wilt return. I am sure they used to say it in Latin - I just didnt go to very many funerals when i was young and we had the tridentine (Latin) rite.
Whether or not the early Christians allowed various bits of other pagan worship (or jewish) to leak into their own rituals is an interesting question that I am not equipped to discuss. You have to start kicking something called the didache around.
The literary device for someone saying something before it was said - or doing something before it was invented is anachronism.
poem on the death of Queen Victoria, said to have been written by someone in India:
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes
Into the tomb the Great Queen dashes.
Australian chant on the occasion of a bygone Ashes series (against England, for non-cricketers; Lillee and Thomson were Australian bowlers):
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
If Lillee don't get ya, Thommo must.
Although the complete quote comes, as The Corbyloon and others have stated from the Church of England Book of Common Prayer, the origin is found in Genesis 3:19, when Elohim is pronouncing the curse on Adam for his disobedience...
BTW, the Book of Common Prayer was established in England 1662 and adopted by the Church of Ireland in 1666, so it is quite late in realtion to the Roman occupation of Britain...
I still remember (after all these years) the words from the Ash Wednesday service to mark the beginning of Lent:
"Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return."
The priest said these words as he made a cross on your forehead with the ashes of palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday.