|
Death
where is thy sting-a-ling
Satirist George Ade once said that in the city, a funeral
is just the interruption of traffic whereas in the country,
it is a form of popular entertainment.
Things have changed mightily in rural Ireland in the past
twenty years in relation to wakes and funerals and the emergence
of the funeral home has accelerated that change dramatically.
The older generation have mourned the passing of the old
customs (no pun intended) and on closer inspection it’s
easy to see why.
In the not too distant past, many rural Irish folk called
the say a person died his “third birthday”. Their
reckoning was that natural life began on the first day of
birth, supernatural life on the second day when they received
the sacrament of Baptism, and the third when they died and
entered eternal life. Waking the dead was almost a festive
occasion in many parts of Ireland, provided the occasion
was not too austere. This would be if the deceased was a
young person or the death was the result of a tragic accident.
If the dead person had lived a long and productive life,
this was the forerunner to two or three days of unbridled
fun and entertainment. People regarded it as a fitting farewell
to a loved one, and , believing that they had gone to a
better life, they celebrated. One old south Donegal character,
just recently deceased himself told me that he always attended
a wake “fully armed”, i.e., a bottle in every
pocket. A common belief or perhaps the most plausible excuse
for frivolity was that liveliness was important because
excessive grieving over a departed soul could give it a
tormented afterlife.
TOOLS FOR THE JOURNEY
The first duty of the chief mourner was to stop the clock
at the time of death, to answer the most frequently asked
question. “What time did he/she die?” Up to the
late 1950’s, white clay pipes were pre-filled with
tobacco, and all mourners were excepted to “take a
pull”, whether they were a smoker or not. Many older
women especially, took advantage of the situation and sucked
the pipe for most of the night. It was frowned on at other
times. The Rosary is almost mandatory at wakes and in many
cases, the “trimmings’ were as long as the prayer
itself.
These include intercessional prayers that implore the saints
in intervene on everyone’s behalf. The response in
usually “ Pray for us”. Weariness at one wake
in Co. Derry prompted some improvisation among a section
of the men when they responded “ make tae for us”.
Strange customs and practices prevailed at Irish wakes,
many only dying out in the last thirty years. Older people
in north Derry told of the practice of putting a hammer,
flint and tinder into the coffin before the lid was secured.
The hammer was for knocking on Heaven’s door, the flint
and timber for lighting the way through the “valley
of shadows”. In the same part of Derry, the large toes
of the corpse were tied together to prevent the ghost from
walking. A widespread practice, not that long abolished,
was to give the dead person’s clothes to a deserving
person known to the deceased’s family. The recipient
was required to wear them to Mass for three consecutive
Sundays and should illness prevent him from attending, the
clothes were sent along to the church in a bundle. The belief
was that the dead person would be more regally clothed in
the next life because of their generosity in this one.
SNUFF AT A WAKE
Many old sayings given birth at wakes prevail to the present
day. In some cases, when a person was buried, a piece of
string was attached to one of the fingers and passed up
through a pipe to the surface where it was attached to a
bell. If the person in the coffin regained consciousness
and moved, the bell would ring and alert a guardian, paid
by the family for such an eventuality, and he would raise
the alarm. This was the origin of the saying “saved
by the bell”. Only wealthy families could afford to
pay watchers at graves. It was also customary for a bowl
of snuff to be placed on the chest of the dead person. This
had a dual function in the snuff being a desirable commodity,
brought the mourners close to the coffin to say a prayer
for the deceased . Should the person in the coffin not be
dead, the bowl on his or her chest would be seen to rise
and fall, though no record exists of anyone being rescued
by snuff. So many came forward that the bowl had to be replenished
regularly, giving rise to the saying “disappeared like
snuff at a wake”. A variation of this theme was in
vogue in the 1880’s in other parts of the British Isles
when, instead of snuff, a bowl of salt and some bread were
placed on the dead person. The bread was eaten by a depraved
person known as a “sin eater”, the belief being
that the sins of the dead person was absorbed into the body
of the “sin eater” with the bread. The salt was
a protection against evil spirits.
FUN AND GAMES
Wakes were frequently used as occasions of great merriment
and games playing. In the 1930s in west Donegal, there were
not enough chairs at a wake to accommodate the large numbers
of mourners. One of the families hit on the ideal of bringing
in bags of potatoes from a barn to be used as seats. The
younger lads gave up their seats to the older folk and sat
on the potatoes. As the night wore on and a fair amount
of alcohol had been consumed, events became quite boisterous.
The young bucks started throwing potatoes at other mourners
when they were not looking in their direction. As the only
light was the Tilley lamp, the semi-darkness was their favour.
The banter only stopped when a spud hit the dead person
in the coffin, and another hit a clay pipe being “reddened”
for the corpse by an elderly neighbour, who then wanted
to fight with all the young lads.
In 1908, a cobbler from Co. Monaghan was known far and wide
for his lenient attitude to those who were slow to pay him
for work done. At his wake, the house was full to overflowing
as the countryside came to the final respects. Nearing midnight,
the deceased’s wife went inside and called all to come
inside to join the others. Thinking that another Rosary
was to be recited, all duly flocked in. The house was absolutely
packed and to everyone’s surprise, the wife locked
the door and put the key into the pocket of her apron. She
then proceeded to pull a stool from under a table, stand
on it, and from another pocket, brought out two pages from
which she started to read the names of all those who owed
her husband money, and the amount each owed. The list was
as long as undertaker’s overcoat.
Co. Sligo fared no better. One of two bachelor brothers
died, leaving the other heartbroken. On the first night
of the wake, things started off quite dignified, but as
the night wore on, the drink took hold and the craic became
mighty. Unable to contain himself any longer, the other
brother jumped up and shouted, “it wasn’t for
sport that poor Seamus died”. At most wakes, the faults
and failings of the deceased are forgotten, temporarily
at least, as his good points are paraded openly. Two brothers
attending a wake in Co. Tyrone in the 1930’s, paid
their respects and sat down to enjoy a cup of tae. One of
the brothers, not having lived in the locality for some
considerable time, asked one of the locals about the character
of the dead man. “Would he have been the kind of man
who would steal money”, he enquired.The other thought
for a moment, looked up at the ceiling and then asked “How
much”.
CHURCH INTERVENES
Games made up the best form of amusement at wakes and many
of them ended up in fights. In the 1880’s, a common
game was “hearing confessions”. A selected man
would put a red ribbon or a straw collar around his neck
and sit in a corner to “hear confessions”, The
rest of the company looked on as the “penitent”
confessed his sins. Nobody heard what those sins were as
he mostly mumbled gibberish but the “priest” would
act horrified from time to time. He imposed a severe penance,
which had to be performed in the wake house, causing much
enjoyment because of the embarrassing nature of the penance.
Should things get completely out of control, the host would
place a candle in the corpse’s hand because, according
to tradition, that would make everybody fall asleep. There
were almost two hundred recorded wake games, with names
like The Burning Toothache, Kissing the Goat and the Red
Thief of the Horses. The church intervened at intervals
and many pronouncements were made banning all unchristian
like activities at wakes. In 1927, the Synod of Maynooth
“forbade absolutely”, all such activities and
any unseemly practices were a corpse was present.
Fears and obscure customs were treated with a marked reverence
at many wakes. In south Donegal and many parts of Co. Derry
the windows and doors were opened when the sick person entered
their final hours. This was to allow the soul of the dying
person free and unhindered passage to leave the body. Candles
burning in a wake house were watched with trepidation. It
the wax formed a distinctive pattern, it was known as “the
silent shroud” and further death would visit the area
again very soon. A generation ago, cats were rigidly excluded
from the room were the corpse lay. It was genuinely believed
that they had the ability to steal the soul of the deceased
person.
The peculiarities of the time were not confined solely to
the wake house. Funeral processions on their way to the
graveyard, stopped at any crossroads, these representing
the cross of Christ, and prayers were said. One of the worst
fates that could befall a family, according to beliefs of
not too distant past, was to have a relative the last one
to be interred in a cemetery. Tradition had it that the
last person buried in a graveyard had to “wait”
on all the other occupants, bringing them water at specific
times.
LAMENT OF THE DEAD
One of most sombre of exercises associated with wakes in
the past was the keening, or lamenting of the dead. This
was invariably, though not exclusively, carried out by women,
and only then when the deceased had been formally laid out.
This is explained in folk belief that the Devil’s dogs
lay in wait for passing souls, and might be roused from
their sleep by the premature keening of the relatives. Once
the body was laid out for the wake, the danger had passed.
Keening was a loud wailing that expressed the grief of the
family and was soul wrenching in its intensity. The more
the deceased was held in esteem, the greater the volume
of the keening.
The old ways have now yielded to the new, and a solemn dignity
has replaced the excesses of times long gone. It is, nonetheless,
an entirely fascinating experience to look back at the customs
and beliefs that were held in such esteem by generations
past and which may seem so strange to our modern concept
of behaviour and decorum.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Gill &
Mac Millan for access to some material in the compilation
of this article.
Courtesy of the Derry Journal
By Laurence Moore
December 2004
|
