Ancient Irish Funeral Traditions

Have you ever been to an Irish wake? If so, you may have heard of the ancient tradition of keening or the superstition of the 'hungry grass'. In this episode, Dan is joined by the hosts of the After Dark podcast, Dr Anthony Delaney and Dr Maddy Pelling, to explore some of the historic rites and beliefs surrounding death and mourning in Ireland. Anthony explains the role of 'keening women' - once persecuted by the government and the church - who would wail and lament at the graveside (and air any mistakes the deceased may have made) as well as the procession down the 'corpse road' and the customs of covering mirrors and opening the window at the point of death. Warning: this episode has an instance of explicit language. If you want more Halloween listening from Dan, Anthony and Maddy, you can check out this episode on The Origins of Halloween here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6MEO4AI9cbO0PtEH5l4zyZ Produced by Freddy Chick and edited by Matthew Wilson and Dougal Patmore Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 1:38Dan Snow?

  Hi folks, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. If you have kids or if you have a podcast producer who is obsessed with autumn fall, like I do, it won't have passed you by that today is Halloween. Last year, we did an episode that everyone seemed to love with our good friends over on the After Dark Podcast, Dr Anthony Delaney and Dr Maddy Pelling. We talked about the Irish origins of Halloween. We looked at Samhain, the pagan festival that marks the end of the Celtic harvest season and the beginning of winter, when they believed that the veil between the world of the living and of the dead was a At its thinnest, we carved turnips, which was the OG vegetable, used to make jack-o'-lanterns. Now this pumpkin nonsense, they ward off evil spirits, obviously. We

• 2:19Dan Snow?

  tried an Irish barnbrak cake, a sort of cake with raisins and sultanas in it, which I absolutely loved. Now, a key part of my Halloween celebrations. And you can find links to that episode in the show notes. And after we went live with that episode, now everyone talks about Irish Halloween. It's just, we moved the Overton window there, folks. I'm taking full credit. And since we're back in spooky season now, I thought we'd get the gang together, the old team together, to give you another lesson in ancient Irish history. This is the story of how people in Ireland have approached death and grief for millennia. And the story of how they faced persecution for it. The storytelling of today's episode

• 2:58Dan Snow?

  is of ancient Gaelic burial traditions. Keening, for example. The keening women, as they're known, were ritual mourners in the Gaelic tradition. And they would wail, they'd sing a lament to express grief on behalf of bereaved family and community. In the 19th century, this was thought to be so transgressive that both the British government, and remarkably, the Catholic Church, working hand in glove for a change, sought to eliminate it entirely. Keening women faced public humiliation, whipping, beating, and excommunication. From the long and winding corpse roads, to the folklore curse of hungry grass. Today, I'm joined by Maddie and Anthony to dig into the history of ancient, and pretty recent, Irish funerary rites.

• 3:50Speaker 04

  Okay, so, let's begin with the obvious, keening. Anthony, what is it?

• 3:55Dan Snow?

  You hear the expression. I didn't know it was actually a thing.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really was a thing. Not in my lifetime. I don't actually, I've been to quite the few wakes. I've never seen this in person. And actually, it must be a really dramatic thing to see. But let's kind of talk about some of the ins and outs of it. The word comes from eg quina or quincha, which means to cry. So it's all about crying, lamenting.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  And you might think that it's a free form thing that's happening just on the spot that they're improvising. But actually, this is a very formalized performance. You're paying women to come and to sit beside the dead body or to follow the dead body down the road as it's going to the burial. And to wail and to cry and to lament and to sometimes celebrate. But also, if you've maybe done a few dodgy things, they'll bring that up as well as part of expunging those experiences. And it's really ancient. You're talking about like eighth century for this. So it's an old, old tradition, kind of dies out by the 1940s, they think, on the Aran Islands as the last place in the west of Ireland. So it really is a traditional, traditional mourning ritual.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  So, okay, I have a lot of questions.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Go on.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  First of all, so you're telling me that if you've done something a bit dodgy in your life, that the Keeney women will bring that up?

• 5:12Speaker 02

  It can be, it can be, it can be part of the lament. And there are, there are different forms to that where they can say, you know, oh, forgive him. You know, it's almost like an appeal to say, forgive him for being so cruel that one time. But generally, they will try and keep it a little bit more of a, oh, we're gonna miss you kind of thing.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  I'm already feeling slightly anxious thinking of like all the bad things that could come up. Yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. I've heard recordings.

• 5:37Dan Snow?

  I was gonna say that we can hear this, can't we?

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, you can go on YouTube and you can find some recordings from the early 20th century. And they are, I mean, they are haunting and you talk about like, I don't know if you do, but one talks about the banshee. There is a banshee quality and it's only women, by the way. So it's only women that are taking part in this.

• 5:53Speaker 04

  Well, this was gonna be my second question because, you know, we're all about equality here. Why is it only women?

• 5:57Speaker 02

  I think it might link into that banshee link where it's women lamenting, it's crying. Talk about like the performance of gender. It's more acceptable that the women are absolutely losing their shit beside the grave than it is that men are doing it. So I think it feeds into that. And then the banshee stories as well.

• 6:15Dan Snow?

  It's weird that the British government and the Catholic Church hated this so much.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:21Dan Snow?

  Pagan?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's because it's pagan, it's because it's women, and it's because they're getting paid for it.

• 6:27Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Which is interesting, right? Because certainly in modern Ireland, or eighties, nineties Ireland, priests are also getting paid by the family to perform the funeral rites and to do the burial and to all that kind of thing.

• 6:39Dan Snow?

  But they're dudes, man.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  But yeah, but it's a different set. Clearly, they want all the money. Yeah. So they do have this thing where they're trying to rid the kind of folklore. Again, look, it's all about control, isn't it? That's what it comes down to. It's like, we can't have this heathenistic pagan ritual going on when we're trying to civilize this.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  And also, the budget is being stretched because you're now paying for the priest.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's less money.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  Which is an issue.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:04Dan Snow?

  It's a big topic. There's something, isn't there, about Western civilization and like the physicality and control and sensuousness? I've been raised, you know, you go to the coronation, everyone is like bolt upright, stiff upper lip, and there's something that our Western version of modernity is so different.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  It's almost like overt emotion is too much. And the unpredictability that can come from within that emotion, like what happens if this community is literally wailing?

• 7:32Dan Snow?

  Getting a bit physical.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, what are the things that can occur once that begins?

• 7:36Speaker 04

  Do you think there's still the empire as well, and the idea of control, thinking, obviously in this case about the British Empire, but thinking about like the Romans as well, the idea of like control, discipline, everything is ordered? And with the Romans, they have these shows of chaos and emotion, but they're very controlled. They happen within designated public spaces or designated holidays. And oh, you can go and get absolutely, you know, pissed on this mountain at this point, or you can hack someone's death in the arena. But the rest of the time, you have to live by the rules of society. And I think the British Empire is like that, certainly in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in Ireland. And maybe that's the Irish then, and that kind of pagan aspect is seen as savage and as uncivilized at the time.

• 8:12Dan Snow?

  Because do you remember that movie, The Northman?

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:15Dan Snow?

  Which, yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  Great movie.

• 8:17Dan Snow?

  Which is a great movie. And it's been received differently in some different constituencies. But one of the big thing about that movie was they wanted to show white Europeans. Giving themselves over to wildness.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:32Dan Snow?

  You know, in those hallucinogenic scenes around the fire. And I've read about the filmmakers, they want to present white Europeans as capable of those kind of activities and those ways of as other places around the world. And it really made me think of that. And there's something about the journey we've been on, which is, as you say, Roman legion, straitjacket, everyone dressed the same, there's a list.

• 8:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:53Dan Snow?

  Civilization appears in the West, almost literally binding us physically, I think, and intellectually.

• 8:58Speaker 04

  I suppose as well with the keening, there's a kind of, you're saying there, Dan, about the kind of hallucinogenic aspects in that film. And I'm thinking in that film as well, there's a scene in a burial mound, isn't there, where someone falls into a burial mound, or they dig in to get a sword or something. There's sort of two versions of it where someone is just buried and dead in there, but then there's another scene where they're alive and they have to fight them for the sword. And there's something about mourning and being close to death and dead bodies, where in this context with the keening, it's transgressive, it's almost transformative, it's a spiritual exercise that bridges that gap between life and death. And that kind of hysteria that is brought up, that bubbles up, is almost hallucinogenic. It has the same kind of effect on the people doing it and the people around them.

• 9:39Speaker 04

  And I just wonder if that is an issue as well. In Britain, certainly in England, we have this really sanitized version of death. And we're going to talk about the wake in Ireland. We don't have that here generally, you know, we have, somebody dies, they go off to the morgue and then

• 9:50Dan Snow?

  And you put a suit on.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly.

• 9:52Dan Snow?

  You have to put a suit on and like make small talk. And what you want to do is scream.

• 9:56Speaker 04

  Scream, yeah, exactly.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  I mean, the one thing I suppose to highlight is that this is not necessarily this unbridled thing, right? There actually is form and purpose to it as well. It is grief as an art form. And I just want to read you here some of this.

• 10:13Dan Snow?

  I guess the British authorities aren't seeing that.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Oh, they don't understand what they're saying?

• 10:17Dan Snow?

  No, no, there is a, there's a, I don't have sophistication for it, but there's a complexity to this.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, absolutely. And I think no sophistication probably isn't the right thing, especially in the 19th century. And I have an example here from the 18th century, just the very end. This is in Irish, this is in the Gaelic language, and so the planters are not even understanding what's happening in this. So this is from 1793.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  This is the song.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  This is of Keen. Is, yeah, so there is a melody to it, but it's very free form and it will change depending on.

• 10:42Speaker 04

  And you will now be singing.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  And I will not be doing it, but I'll read it to you and I'll give you some of it in Irish, just so you can get an idea. And actually, it's interesting that we're talking about this, the idea of the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland. This was a song that was akin, that was by Eileen O'Connell, seventeen ninety-three. And it was for her dead husband who was shot for refusing to undersell his horse to a Protestant. And so what the Irish had to do was sell horses for way, way, way, way, way below, the native Irish, for way below their market value. And he didn't, and so he was killed. And this is what she laments. Again, I won't do the keen, but I'll give you some of the Irish and then I'll give you the translation. It says, my girl to Godangin is Irish who is a shas of is Tarlem fein awalia.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Go quirfin martalaga, go nelfum er cusher farthing. Go meg aguin kilaspraga, go corig ditcha laba. Fui varlini giala, fui kulancha, braha, braca. On veen fig asset alice in inned on fukta a glass case. My own beloved dear, now get up on your feet and come on home with me. And we will slaughter beef and we'll organize a feast and we'll have music playing. And I'll make you a bed with clean white sheets with colored patchwork quilts to make you sweat with heat instead of this awful cold.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  So she's really, you know, talking about, she's going to be missing this person from the mundanity of everyday life. But it's this, yeah, it's this appeal, isn't it? It's something so earthy and so, so forlorn that she has to lament it into the world.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  And it's transcendent again, right? She's asking this corpse to get up and come home with her and slaughter the beef. And she's made the bed and it's all full of white sheets. It's all beautiful. She's like, don't, don't be dead. Yeah, essentially like come back with me in whatever form. Wow. I mean, that's incredible.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they could vary from coffin side to coffin side. Obviously this is very particular to that. So there is this sense of improvisation that can go on to as well. You have to think of it in terms of the Irish music tradition, which again was very, um, not necessarily written down, but was. On orally, and this is feeding into that same tradition. The melodies can change, the wail can change. But there is always a crying element. So you get that, that's a little bit more structured. And then you get the more free form, which is the cry to the gods, essentially, which is, you know, bring down this earth because I am suffering so much and we are suffering so much. But it's also performative. They're being paid.

• 13:09Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  In certain aspects.

• 13:10Dan Snow?

  But that's, I'm just thinking, in our culture, we pay people to represent us legally. I mean, it's funny, why are these people not as we paid? Everyone else has been paid for everything else.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  There's death duelers now.

• 13:19Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  You know, and it's actually a part of that. It's helping with the grieving process in many ways.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Bring death duelers up every.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  I love a death doula.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  Wants to be a death doula.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  I could, I could see myself as a death doula. I could, I could do it. Yeah.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Definitely do.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  I, it's, and I have been with people, because again, we're talking about this Irish thing about death. I have been with people, one person, when they have died. And it's such a privilege to be with somebody when they're dying. And I just think we, we sanitize that process a little bit less in Ireland, and it's much, much quicker than it is here. But it comes from this, it comes from this proximity to death, where people are around the body and taking care of that body themselves to as much as they can in this day and age.

• 13:57Dan Snow?

  It's funny, we keep talking about well, they're being paid as if that makes us authentic, but you know, organists are paid today in funerals and they move the audience to tears. You know, there's certain choirs at weddings, that shouldn't take away from the power and the immediacy of what they're delivering.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, as you say, organists are paid, other people are paid in this process, priests are paid. Yeah. So it's to pay people around death is perfectly legitimate, but to pay women who are rural, relatively poor, who are women in the context of, say, the 18th, 19th century. You're giving this, and to also put them in such close proximity to really important life stage as well. That's not something that you want to hand over too easily because there's control in that, there's power in that, there's influence in that.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, this idea of the women versus the priests, I think is really interesting because you have. The women, in some cases, in the example you've just given us, writing their own keening lyrics, would you call them lyrics? The words of the lament. And so in that case, in the one that we heard, she's calling for the corpse to rise from the dead. How does that sit with the priest who's then saying, this is what's happening to the soul, this is what's happening now, this is, I'm explaining to you all who don't understand it, I have the power to explain this, this is what's going on.

• 15:08Dan Snow?

  It's also going to rise to them, but in a completely different way.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a rising, but it's not like that.

• 15:15Dan Snow?

  Completely, it's not the same.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's that pagan thing, isn't it? And actually, the church in Ireland really struggles with this over centuries, where it's going, there is too many talks of fairies and ghosts and banshees, this is not.

• 15:27Speaker 04

  Stop it.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  And as a result, they are very draconian in Ireland, to such an extent that even in the 20th century, the church in Rome is saying, lads, calm down, that's too much, you're being too much. Like, that filters into Ireland from Rome, where they're going, even we're not happy with this. So they really are trying to stamp that out, but it hasn't worked. And then, you know, we talk about when keening kind of ends in the 20th century, at the very beginning, but by the 1940s, there's this Gaelic revival going on again, and we see Gaelic revivals all the time. There's one happening in Ireland right now, like, the Irish language is really flourishing in Ireland again. And this idea of keening comes back and a celebration and an acknowledgement of what that was, comes back in the 1940s as well.

• 16:05Dan Snow?

  Keening now, today, is that part of the revival?

• 16:07Speaker 02

  I've been to my fair share of wakes and I've never, if I walked into that and I saw that happening, I think I'd be fascinated to see that. Now, if you were looking for us, the place to go would be the west of Ireland, but I, my family are living in the southeast, so I've never encountered it, but I would be thrilled if I walked into a wake and saw that happening.

• 16:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, write in if you're a keening.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Let us know.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Let's talk about the wake then, because this is what fascinates me, as someone who's grown up in England, and my experience of funerals are very much not this. We don't sit with the body for several days, we don't have it in the house.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:37Speaker 04

  Because I find this so moving, as well as interesting. I think this is really important, and I'm sad that we don't have it here, but tell us about this.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's also exhausting. I mean, that's one of the other things to say. So, the wake is becoming a shorter process in Ireland now, but in the 19th century into the early 20th century, it was over two nights. What you get now is... That we sit around the coffin and you might be there for two days. But what used to happen is the corpse would be laid out, maybe even in the bed. They'd be dressed in a suit or they could be in a shawl, depending on what time period you're looking at, or they could be laid out on a table and people would just gather around. So it's very much this like proximity to death where you are surrounding this body. And then there are rituals that need to be observed. And for instance, I was with my granny when she died a few years back. I don't, I can't remember now, five or six years ago, I suppose it is.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  And I was in the room and other members of my family were in the room and we were sitting with her. And as soon as she died, and this is in the 21st century, as soon as she died, my mum went to the window and opened the window because that's one of those things, you let the soul out and you don't trap the soul in the room at the instant of death. We didn't do this, but older traditions are the clocks all get stopped and mirrors are all covered. So time starts to lose meaning. And that was very much around in the 20th century. I haven't experienced it. We don't do that now, but certainly up until the

• 17:55Speaker 04

  The family did open the window.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  The family did open the windows. You would still see some places that mirrors get covered. So you'll put a black drape over the mirrors.

• 18:03Speaker 04

  And why the mirror covering? Is that to dissuade vanity in that moment because you're meant to be reflecting on something else? Is it something about the mirror as a portal? Did you allow the spirit out?

• 18:11Speaker 02

  It's that, it's the mirror as a portal. You're not allowing the soul to get trapped anywhere. So that's why the windows are open. You know, the way you do the, what is it, divining or the scrying, I think it is, isn't it? Where you look in the mirror and you bring forth souls or ghosts, whatever it might be. So it's not to trap them in there. So it's this quasi-magic element that's going on. Quasi? You know, well, yeah, yeah, exactly. And it really, really persists. As I say, this was five or six years ago and that window had to be opened. So it's, oh, and the, one of the ones that I really like is if, don't ask me how this would happen, but I guess it would in the 19th century. If a hen flies over the corpse, that hen has to be killed instantly.

• 18:50Speaker 04

  That's so specific.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  But it is like, I mean, what are you going to do? Justice for the hens. But and again, it's this thing about, I think my understanding of it is it's the transfer of soul. You do not want that soul jumping into that hen.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  You don't want grandma walking around as a

• 19:04Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, the fox is going to kill her. So yeah, it's interesting to think about, you know, there's something leaving you. We have to be really careful about where that something goes.

• 19:15Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History. There's more coming.

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• 22:47Speaker 04

  Dan, you have Irish family, right? Have you ever been to an Irish wake?

• 22:51Dan Snow?

  I've been to a bastardized, modern Irish wake, which is very sad. In Ireland? It's in Dublin, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I feel I'm not the right person around the table to talk about wage. But, you know. But I appreciated immediately the sense that everyone knew what to do. And I think we in England and the UK have lost. Nice to see this with my Jewish friends, I see it with friends elsewhere in the world. Everyone kind of goes, oh, there's been a death. And then everything, some people bring food, some people do this, some people open a bottle, you know, and we all just go, oh, I don't know, it's capitalism, as the markets shattered our ability to remember. Because presumably, we used to do things as a community, and we're in the worst of both worlds.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:31Dan Snow?

  We've inherited a strange Edwardian formality.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, we mustn't show any emotion, but we don't know why.

• 23:36Dan Snow?

  We don't know what, because presumably that served its own purpose, and perhaps that did give strength and.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:41Dan Snow?

  But instead, we've now lost, yeah, between.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. For me, the thing that is so alien in death culture over here is the time that you guys take to bury the dead. It feels almost cruel to me when I see it unfold, because you have weeks between the person dying and being, you know.

• 23:59Speaker 04

  It's strange, it's a really strange time, and it's a kind of limbo time as well, right?

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:02Speaker 04

  Sort of waiting for that to happen, and yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Then you have to take time off again, and life is moving, but it's not.

• 24:08Dan Snow?

  Okay, so the wake, the two nights thing, so presumably the burial's part, so you know what, it's two nights, and then the burial happens.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  So it used to be two nights of a wake, a funeral, which would happen at like 11 o'clock on the day, and then a burial the following day. So it would be like a four day event. And, you know, you're not doing anything during that time, apart from, your drinking was part of the culture more so than it is now, but certainly there is drink at funerals now. There was pipes passed around, which would be given out over the body. You know, I'm talking about quite a few pipes, corpse pipes, I think they were called. And when you take the pipe, you have to say, Lord have mercy. So you're like, smoking for the dead person, you know, for their soul.

• 24:44Speaker 04

  It made me flashbacks to like Catholic Church, peace be with you, peace be with you.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, very bad, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:49Dan Snow?

  What did they die of? Oh, lung cancer.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's what they would have wanted. And so, but one of the things, we're talking about drinking, one of the things that would have happened, and I have never experienced this, so this is going to be my first Irish outing, over the body would be drinking of, well, many things, but pochins specifically. And it just so happened.

• 25:08Dan Snow?

  Oh, bless.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Well, we're going to try some, this is actual alcohol. What time is it? We're recording this at half ten in the morning, just to let everybody know.

• 25:16Speaker 04

  Anthony's had four shots of this.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:19Dan Snow?

  Just a few rehearsals.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Smell it before we go.

• 25:21Dan Snow?

  Wowee.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  It's very fruity. Right, pass me your glass.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  Oh, what's the measure of this?

• 25:25Speaker 02

  I'm gonna do a shot measure, right?

• 25:27Speaker 04

  I mean, obviously, that's pretty generous.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Oh, is it?

• 25:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Tell you how many shots I'm doing in this day and age. Um, right, we're gonna try us. Have you tasted Poochine before?

• 25:36Dan Snow?

  I have.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Have you actually?

• 25:38Dan Snow?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Okay, sloncher.

• 25:40Dan Snow?

  Sloncher.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  Oh, straight down.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, it was a lot.

• 25:43Speaker 04

  That's.

• 25:43Dan Snow?

  It was a lot. You just embarrassed me there. I was a sip. I took it as a sip.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  It was a lot.

• 25:47Dan Snow?

  It's a bit vodka, isn't it? But fruitier.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, that's exactly what it is. I'd like try to regain some form of composure. Why did I drink the whole thing? Am I supposed to drink the whole?

• 25:58Speaker 04

  And can I just say as well to everyone listening that we have, I think, four or five more episodes to go today?

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Pain stripper is what that is. Anyway.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  So that's taken over the body?

• 26:06Speaker 02

  That's taken over the body and it is, you know, listen, this is a very safe and distilled version of this. But people are brewing this at home. It can be really, really strong.

• 26:17Speaker 04

  Have you ever made your own alcohol?

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, no.

• 26:20Dan Snow?

  Is it potato based?

• 26:21Speaker 02

  It can be. So barley originally, but then potato, anything starchy. Sometimes there was elements of fruit going in there. The history of Poochine in itself is so interesting because of all people, Charles the Second outlaws it in Ireland.

• 26:34Dan Snow?

  That's right.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  And, and yeah, you would imagine he'd be like, bring on the Poochine.

• 26:38Speaker 04

  Get it over here, please.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  No, he bans it because of it's so popular. He wants the tax from it and it's not taxable, so he bans it. But as a result, it actually takes on this other life of its own where people are going, we're holding on to this because they've told us we can't have this.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  It becomes a symbol of defiance. That's interesting.

• 26:54Dan Snow?

  And yet it's also interesting that sometimes we approach these subjects with this sort of reverence for this ancient tradition. Actually, tobacco relatively recently introduced, you know, in the last four hundred years. If it was potato based Poochine, again, post Columbian food exchange. So actually, we'd be wrong to sort of approach this as we do Stonehenge or something. These, these traditions are alive. They're evolving throughout Irish history.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  I think that's really interesting to say that they're alive and they're evolving because I get a sense of that even now that they're alive and that they're evolving. And it's interesting because the younger people are moving away from maybe some of the more, like, for instance, one of the things that's so popular with my parents' generation in Ireland is all right. R I P dot I E. So if you haven't heard of this, it's essentially Facebook for the dead.

• 27:36Dan Snow?

  Oh my goodness.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  So as soon as somebody dies.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Oh wow.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Their profile goes up on R I P dot I E. And dot I E is like our dot co dot U K or dot com. And their picture is up there as we were, as we were preparing for this, I got Freddie, our producer, to go on and look up my granny's profile on R I P dot I E, because everybody goes on there.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  Are these updated or is this just like a notice board of like granny's now?

• 27:58Dan Snow?

  Can you get the user generated content?

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's where the funeral is going to be. It's whether or not they're having the wake at the home or wherever it is. It's whether or not it's at the funeral. But then you get to leave comments. So the people in the community or people who are can't make it to the funeral.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  It's like modern keeping and people can put in the comments, well, this one time Anthony really wronged me. Yeah, it is.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  It has, oh yeah, good, well done. It has happened that there are moderators and

• 28:22Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  had to be removed and people have had to be removed if it's getting too much.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  Okay, I know what I'm doing when I get home.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Generally, R I P dot I E.

• 28:30Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  But generally speaking, yeah, but younger people are kind of not doing that so much. But this element is very much still present. The wake element is still very much present. So that's not going. We haven't really embraced the funeral homelessness thing in the same way that it happens. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely funeral home wakes and funerals. But we're still very much waking in the house and getting very drunk in the process, which has been going on since the sixth century or whatever it is. So, you know, it's an ancient tradition we stick to quite proudly.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. Um, okay, so you've done the wake.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  I have.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  You're quite drunk.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:01Speaker 04

  For the two days.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 29:03Speaker 04

  Done the tobacco and all of that. We then need to take the coffin to the church.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  You do.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  For the funeral. Talk to me about funeral roads, because I find this fascinating, this idea of carrying the body. And I know in Ireland, you're not meant to put the coffin down, right? Because this is very different in England. I used to live on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. And there they've got corpse roads where they have corpse or coffin stones along the road. Because it's such a vast place.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:27Speaker 04

  You know, it's so remote, you'd have to walk potentially several miles to take farmer, whatever, from this valley to the church there, that you would need to put it down along the way. And they're all still in place. I think they're still used in some instances.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:38Speaker 04

  So, but this is not the case in Ireland, right? It's very, very, very bad to put the coffin down.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, you don't be putting the coffin down. Now, can I ask you a question before I answer any of this? Have you ever, either of you, carried a coffin?

• 29:49Speaker 04

  No.

• 29:49Dan Snow?

  No.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  Okay. I don't know if it's way more usual in Ireland, but I've carried a few coffins at this point and coffins are heavy.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  Were you invited to?

• 29:57Speaker 02

  No, I just infiltrated the thing. No, they were both grandparents and it's a very strange thing when you stop and think about it. So you're joining somebody else's shoulder and the coffin sits there.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  It gives me so much anxiety, the idea of it's looking awful.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:12Speaker 04

  I couldn't.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  No, really, it is. It's very anxiety inducing. Some people are kind of, please don't make me do this, but there is this kind of pressure to carry your dead. So we still do this to a certain extent. So for instance, when one of my grannies died, the church is not that far away, but she lives down a lane. And so up that driveway, we carried her up until we were at the road and then she got into the car or well, we put her into the car and then she drove literally two and a half minutes to the church. Like we could have, oh no, we carried her the whole way. We carried that granny the whole way. The other one was driven. And so

• 30:44Speaker 04

  She was a bit heavier.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  She was further away. And so there is this carrying that we still do. But traditionally, now this wouldn't happen anymore. Yes, you're right, Maddie. You can't leave the coffin down on grass, but you can leave it down if you put a, some kind of a sheet underneath this. But if you leave it on the grass, if you leave it on the grass, the grass becomes what's called hungry grass or corpse grass. But the actual translation from Irish is that it's the hungry man, actually, is how it translates.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  I don't like that.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  And that grass then needs to be cleansed and it needs to be

• 31:16Speaker 04

  Why? What will happen?

• 31:17Speaker 02

  I'm not sure what the implication is, but

• 31:20Speaker 04

  Is that that it will become like a grave in itself?

• 31:22Speaker 02

  I don't know. I really don't know. It's, it doesn't make sense to a certain extent, but you're not supposed to have it and you're not supposed to let your animals eat it. But it has to be dealt with and it has to be kind of purified. So you can put holy water on it is one way to do it. There are other ways as well. So it's, you're not supposed to have it down. And also, by the way, there's another, yeah, it's referred to as the far gerta. That's the hungry man or the famished man or whatever. And to counter this, you have to eat something over that piece of grass or put holy water on it. So like you could eat

• 31:53Speaker 04

  Now, we'll say, this is a lot of faff.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I've never seen a coffin put down, though.

• 31:59Dan Snow?

  Really? Never seen?

• 31:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  I've never seen that happen.

• 32:02Dan Snow?

  I suppose I haven't either, Rick. I mean, it's not

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it wouldn't.

• 32:04Dan Snow?

  It's odd to just leave it. I mean, it's different in a rural culture. I've only ever seen them back out the car into the old.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  Hmm. It's not far to go.

• 32:13Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. The best is yet to come. Stick with us.

• 32:25Speaker 05

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• 33:08Speaker 05

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• 33:15Speaker 06

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• 33:54Speaker 02

  And how do you do over here in terms of like getting out of the car up to the front of the church? How is that coffin transported? Carried, carried. Carried, so it's the same. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 04

  But often it is the funerary company who does it. It's not always, sometimes it's family who carry it. It depends, I suppose, on the situation. Also, you need family members who are all roughly the same height as well to do it. Otherwise, that's going to be an issue.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  And in Ireland, women often don't carry the coffin, but more and more they're doing it now. But because of that, they put all different things, oh, a woman should be carrying the coffin, but actually it's about height. It's a practicality. Where suddenly you're like this, but also we lower the coffin into the ground ourselves. So like I lowered my granny into the ground.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  Again, the anxiety that is giving me.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Oh, I nearly went in after her. I was like, not because, not in a dramatic way, just and I was like, oh my God, this is heavy. And you, you know, you have the things in your hands that you're lowering down into the ground. And I just feel like a lot of responsibility, but everyone's just doing it. And you have, you have the undertaker beside you going, stand back up, this is right. You need to ground yourself a little bit more.

• 34:47Speaker 04

  Take a step backwards.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  He is directing this because he's used to it. This is a really skilled professional. And just to bring this up as well, you are not allowed, say, for instance, you were on your way to the church. And by the way, some of these corpse roads are incre- there's one in Kilkenny that we walk the dogs on when we're home. They're beautiful. They are serene. They are in the countryside. There is a little route through. It's like a little path. But they're often enclosed with trees. So it's really, really stunning. But you're not allowed to part the funeral party. So you have to stay together because if you do, you're going to bring on another death in the parish. So you have to, you have to stay together. Why you'd be parting? I don't know. I don't know where that group of people are going.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  Well, because someone's seen the comments on the.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  R I P.

• 35:30Speaker 04

  R I P Facebook.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know we're here and we're talking about it in quite a light way. And there is an element of, I suppose now, fun to us, but actually think about what this is doing to community cohesion, to honoring the dead, to helping the living deal with grief, to have that process through which we have to hit these markers. And we're doing it. It's not necessarily the undertaker. And by the way, you know, up until relatively recently, people weren't even embalmed. And this goes for in the 20th century. There are some horrendous stories that I've heard. And I know a family that this happened to where the corpse started, it was particularly hot day and things got unpleasant. And people had to leave the house and that's in my lifetime. So the sanitization of death though, is coming into Ireland, but we still do the wake.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  My granny had a marquee during her wake. That's how many people were there because she has a family of 11. There were so many people coming from all over the country and all over the world, actually, that we needed to add on. It was like a wedding, except less dancing. But no, not no dancing, there was some dancing.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  Did you dance?

• 36:35Speaker 02

  I didn't dance, no.

• 36:36Speaker 04

  No, of course not.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Other people did, yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 04

  You're happy to carry the coffin, not happy to dance.

• 36:39Dan Snow?

  And I celebrate that.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, listen, it really does help because by the end of it, you're actually exhausted and you're ready for the person to go in the ground because you're a bit like, I need to sleep. I need to have time to myself. I've been surrounded by 1,400 people for the last however many days. I need to withdraw now and I need to deal with that grief in another way. In some ways, it kind of delays grief a little bit because you have a job to do over the course of those few days. But at the same time, you are surrounded by community. It is not a lonesome or a lonely activity. It is the time when actually you're held up and you're bound together by this thing that the community comes together for. So in many ways, it's, again, the younger generation probably kind of go, oh God, we have to go to a wake, this is cringe.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  But actually, what it's doing in terms of community formation, it's important. There's a lot to be said for it.

• 37:28Dan Snow?

  I think definitely when they're the dead ones.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, they'll expect it, yeah.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, this is the thing, our grandparents' generation, the wakes are huge. Again, my granny had stadium lighting during her wake, that we needed to have stadium lighting and overflow car parks. But for my parents' generation, I think you will see that to, to come down a little bit because I just don't think we're gonna do that in the same way. So it's probably going to filter down a little bit. And also, there's fewer families with, exactly, yeah, with 11 people. So it's a strange, strange thing, but I kind of love it.

• 37:59Dan Snow?

  It's wonderful.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  And it's very dramatic and I love that about Ireland. Ireland's very dramatic. We do a good line in drama, so yeah, I like it.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  Before we go.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 38:08Speaker 04

  I want to hear one last superstition from the wake and I think you have a little bit of a story to tell us.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  I do, I do. Am I going to do my Shanaki accent for this? Okay, let's see.

• 38:19Speaker 04

  We would expect nothing less.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  Oh God, I've been drinking now and this is what's going to happen. Okay. I'm about to tell you a, a little story, a little schale, and it is death related. And there is a recurring noise and nobody actually definitely knows the answer to this, but I'd like you to tell me what you think the noise in this little story is. So it goes like this. One night, a man named James O'Donnell was coming home from a wake at the hour of nine o'clock. He often heard his father and mother say that it was not right to come from a wake by yourself. But as he was a courageous man, he said he would go alone. He left the wake house by himself and went up through a field, making for his own house, whistling away.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  When he was just a few fields from his house, he heard great hammering beside him. The night was dark and that made his fear worse. The hammering continued, loud in his ear. When he was one field away from his house, he called out to his own dog. But when the dog came, it saw something that the man did not see and put its tail between its two legs and ran up home. The hammering kept going until he reached his own door and closed it. Then it stopped. He went straight to his bed and did not leave it alive. Dan and Maddie, what was that hammering?

• 39:50Speaker 04

  Time to play.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  Oh, Dan, I guess it's.

• 39:54Dan Snow?

  I think it was, he drank a lot.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:57Dan Snow?

  And he was staggering up a hill and, you know, you can hear your heartbeat in your ears and he had a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. Dan's going science with this.

• 40:07Dan Snow?

  Yeah, I'm afraid so, yes. From boozing and climbing up a hill in the middle of the night.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, listen, I'm happy to accept a medical explanation for this, Maddie.

• 40:15Speaker 04

  Oh, 100% supernatural, obviously.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Obviously, yeah, what is it?

• 40:19Speaker 04

  No, I mean, he's, okay, so he's walking, what is it? He's walking through fields. Is it just the wind in the trees, something like that, sticks knocking together?

• 40:30Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm asking you.

• 40:31Speaker 04

  His own boots?

• 40:32Speaker 02

  There is no actual answer, but I'll tell you what I think it is from, from my interpretation of this. I think he's hearing the nails in his own coffin.

• 40:38Dan Snow?

  Oh.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  Nice. Okay, that makes a lot.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  So he's foretelling his own death because he, remember I said we don't pair off? Yeah, we have to stay. It's this Irish goodbye thing. Apparently, don't do that. You might, and I love an Irish goodbye where I just disappear, but if you're at a wake, don't do it.

• 40:55Speaker 04

  You are the king of an Irish goodbye.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. I like, bye, guys, I'm not even gonna tell you. So, yeah, I think he's hearing the nails in his own coffin, that might. And actually, you know, if you think about it, there is often times in the past where the families would make the coffins themselves. So it's like almost as you near your own house, he's hearing what potentially is coming around the corner, because this is an old story, this isn't modern. So, yes, so that's what I, that's what I hear it as, the nails in his coffin.

• 41:17Dan Snow?

  I think you're probably right.

• 41:24Dan Snow?

  Well, that's it, folks. Thanks so much to my guests, Dr Anthony Delaney and Dr Maddy Pelly. Make sure you go and check out their podcast, After Dark, wherever you get your pods. And thank you very much for listening. I hope you have a suitably spooky Halloween, if that's your thing. Mine will be spent doing the rounds, looking for Haribo's with my kids. See you next time.

• 41:50Speaker 05

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 42:33Speaker 05

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• 42:41Dan Snow?

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