Pallbearer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A pallbearer is a funeral paranymph, helping when the casket of a deceased person is carried away from a religious service or viewing to their final resting place, or to and from the hearse which does so.
A pall is the heavy cloth (other uses include the ecclesiastical pallium and the pallium regale, a dalmatic used at British coronations) that is draped over a coffin by metonymy the term pallbearer is used to signify someone who bears the coffin which the pall covers.
Some traditions distinguish between these two roles, with pallbearer being a ceremonial position, just carrying a tip of the pall or a cord atached to it, while casketbearers do the actual heavy lifting and carrying. There may otherwise be only pallbearers in the literal sense while the casket is on an animal or on an animal-drawn or motorized vehicle.
Pallbearers were usually associated in an intimate manner (such as brother, uncle, son, father, or husband - pallbearers are not always male, but male pallbearers are the most common) with the deceased before their death, though this is not always the case.
[edit] Popular culture references
- Mark Calaway: The Undertaker, World Wrestling Entertainment.
- The Pallbearer, a 1996 motion picture
