Now DEARY, Be a Good Little Goblin and Help ME  

In Times of Yore

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey.
The combination would sometimes knock them out
for a couple of days.

Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and thus prepare them for burial.
They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up.
Hence the custom of holding a "WAKE".

~~~~~~~~~~~

England is old and small, and they started running out of places to bury people.
So, they would dig up coffins and would take their bones to a house then reuse the graves.
In reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive.
So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the
ground and tie it to a bell.

Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence the term
"Graveyard Shift"
Or they would know that someone was
" Saved by the bell "
Or he was a "DEAD RINGER " .