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St. Vincent’s Church and graveyard in tiny Ballyferriter, on the Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry, Ireland<\/p><\/div>\n
Someone had to tell the cows in the field, too, so they would not become upset and leave the farm. (No joke.)<\/p>\n
A proper three day send-off, held in the home with the body available for dancing, etc, included food, tobacco, drink, feats of strength, wrestling, singing and practical jokes. Smoke from pipes was thought to purify the air and salt was a charm against evil.<\/p>\n
Leaving the corpse unattended or in the dark was the worst sort of disrespect.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeening\u201d was the Irish word for mourning, but it meant more than crying. It is, rather, praise and lament for the deceased. Sometimes a professional keener or bard was hired to tell the genealogy and virtues of the dead.<\/p>\n
Cathy Jo\u2019s booklet, \u201cWake Me When It\u2019s Over,\u201d is available at IrishTeller.com.<\/p>\n
If you want to get into the spirit, pardon the pun, without being invited to an Irish funeral, try listening to the song \u201cFinnegan\u2019s Wake\u201d (not to be confused with the vexing James Joyce novel), an 1850\u2019s-era ballad recorded by the Dubliners or the Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers. The song tells the story, as many Irish songs do, of the wake of a drunken Tim Finnegan who fell from a ladder and broke his skull. But when revelers accidentally spill whiskey on his corpse, it revives Finnegan, who\u2019d apparently been only in a coma! The moral of the song? Whiskey caused both his fall and his surprise resurrection!<\/p>\n
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Michael Patrick Shiels may be contacted at\u00a0<\/em>InviteYourself@aol.com<\/em><\/a>\u00a0or via TravelTattler.com\u00a0His talk show can be heard weekday mornings in\u00a0Lansing\u00a0on 92.1 FM.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"