After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Truth About Irish Funeral Beliefs

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

What are the origins of keening for the dead? What is the history of Irish wakes? And why must you never put a coffin down on the way to the funeral?Anthony tells Maddy and special guest Dan Snow about the history of Irish funerary traditions.Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign 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.  You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, we're your host's Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like After Dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal, ad-free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. This is the story of the ancient Gaelic burial tradition, seen to be so transgressive that both the British government and the Catholic Church fought to erase it entirely. Despite fierce political and religious opposition,

public humiliation, whipping, beating and excommunication, the Keening Women of Ireland continued to appear at the graveside of Irish funerals, arriving to wail, sing, and violently grieve the dead as they had done for over a thousand years. From the long and winding corpse roads to the folklore curse of hungry grass, today we will be digging into the hidden history of death and defiance in Ireland. This is after dark and this is the history of ancient Irish funerary rights. You've been up all night beside your own. lost love's body. You helped hammer together the coffin in the yard. You served drinks to

visitors. Now you're at the graveside, with the long, straight line of Atlantic waves and the greystone churchyard walls bounding you in. All around you, some standing, some sitting on tombstones, are your people. They are beginning to keen. It is a wild crying for the dead, led by the women, with an ecstasy of grief. You watch your kith and kin sway to and fro, bending their heads against gravestones, calling out to the dead in a sobbing chant. The sky darkens as the coffin is lowered into the grave.

Thunder rumbles and hailstones hiss among the bracken as the keen builds to a crescendo. It is the final act, a cry in the face of the horror to which we are all doomed. We are all doomed. Oh, we're getting spoofed. So we have last year, as you probably remember, had a very special guest on for our Halloween episodes, and we discussed different origins of Halloween, mostly the Irish ones, the Sowan ones. We also tasted some Barn Brack, which was delicious. And we did some crafting, actually, which was probably life-threatening in many ways. And we decided this year that we wanted to get the gang back together to celebrate Halloween once more. And now we are joined by none other than Dan Snow.

Hey, guys. We're back and after dark. Well, I mean, the promise of discussing a topic that both the Catholic Church and the British government are on the same side of. I found like, I know. Listen, it actually happens more than you might think, particularly when it comes to folklore, yes, but it happens. Okay, so let's begin with the obvious Keening. Anthony, what is it? Actually, you hear the expression. I didn't know it was actually a thing. Yeah, no, it really was a thing. Not in my lifetime. I don't actually, I've been to quite the few weeks. 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 out of it. So we have the word comes from egqueena or quencha, which means to cry. So it's all about crying, lamenting. 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 is the last kind of place at the west of Ireland. So it really is like a traditional, traditional morning ritual. So, okay, I have a lot of questions. Go on. First of all, so you're telling me that if you've done something a bit dodgy or shit in your life, that the Keening women will bring that up.

It can be. It can be part of the lament. And 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 like a little bit more of a, oh, we're going to miss you kind of. I'm already feeling slightly anxious, thinking of all the bad things that they would say about you. I've heard recordings.

I was going to say that we can hear this, can we? 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. 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. Well, this was going to be my second question because, you know, we're all about equality here.

Why is it only women? 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. It's weird that the British government and the Chiafersh hated this so much. Yeah. Just because it's a bit pagan.

Yeah, it's because it's pagan. It's because it's women. And it's because they're getting paid for it. Which is interesting, right, because certainly in modern Ireland or, you know, 80s, 90s Ireland, priests are also getting paid by the family to perform the funeral rights and to do the burial and to all that kind of thing. But they do, but yeah, but it's a difference that 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 civilise this. And that comes from the Catholic Church as well. And also the budget is being stretched because you're now paying for the police. Yeah, there's less money. Which is an issue. 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. Choirs stood, you know, you go to the coronation. Everyone is like bolt up, right, stiff up a lip. And there's something that our Western version of modernity is so different. I was watching the Women's Rugby World Cup there. And the Pacific Island has broke out into this incredible dance of fraternity or sisterhood and celebration and at the end of their World Cup experience.

And I just thought, what's wrong? Like, why did we came to see that as sort of savagery, didn't we? And I think it's to do with the physicality of it as well in some ways. It's like being scared of overt sexuality as well. 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 the loss? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, what are the things that can occur once that begins? Do you think it's to do with empire as well on 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 sort of 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 to 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 18th and 19th century in Ireland and maybe that's the Irish then and that kind of pagan aspect is seen as, as you say down, as savage and as uncivilised at the time. Do you remember the movie, the Northman?

Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Great movie. 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, you know, in those hallucinogenic scenes, around the fire. 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 it's something about the journey we've been on, which is, as you say, Roman Legion, straight jacket. Everyone's dressed the same. There's a list. Civilization appears in the West's about sort of binding, almost literally.

binding us physically, I think, and intellectually. 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 to, or they dig in to get a sword or something, and then they have to, there's sort of two versions of it where, you know, 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 sort of 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. And I just wonder if that is an issue as well. In Britain, certainly in England, we have this really sanitised version of death. We're going to talk about the Waken Island. We don't have that here generally. We have somebody dies. They go off to the morgue and then And you put a suit on?

Yes, exactly. You have to put a suit on and like make small talk. What you want to do is scream. It's scream, yeah, exactly. 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. And it is grief as an art form. But I guess the British authorities aren't seeing that.

Oh, they don't understand what they're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a, I don't have sophistication, right, but there's a complexity to this thing. Yes, yes. Absolutely. I think no sophistication probably is 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 they're not even understanding. The planters are not even understanding what's happening in this. So this is from 1793. This is the song. This is a keen. Yeah. So there is a melody to it, but it's very free form and it will change depending on what's happening. And you will now be singing. 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. it's interesting that we're talking about this, the idea of the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland. This was a song that was a keen, that was by Eileen O'Connell, 1793, 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 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, with me and we will slaughter beef and we'll organise a feast and we'll have music playing and I'll make you a bed with clean white sheets with coloured patchwork quilts to make you

sweat with heat instead of this awful cold. 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 appeal, isn't it? It's something so earthy and so so forlorn that she has to lament it into the world. 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 be dead. Yeah, eventually like, come back with me in whatever form. It's, wow, I mean, that's incredible. And they could vary from Coffenside to Coffenside. 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 not necessarily written down, but was passed 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 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 in certain aspects. But in our culture, we pay people to represent us legally. I mean, it's funny, why are these people not allowed to be paid? Everyone else has to be paid for everything else. There's death doulas now. Yeah. You know, and it's actually a part of that.

It's helping with the grieving process in many ways. You bring death duels up every after. I love a death dula. I could see myself as a death dula. I could do it. You could definitely do it. And I have been with people, because again, we're talking about this Irish thing about death. I have been with people, well, one person, when they have died.

And it's there's something very, it's such a privilege to be with somebody when they're dying. I just think 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. It's fair. about well they're being paid as if that makes less authentic.

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 be in any way. I shouldn't take away from the power and the immediacy of what they're delivering. Yeah, I mean, as you say, organists are paid. Other people are paid in this process. The priests are paid.

Yeah. So 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, 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. Yeah, I mean, this idea of the women versus the priest, I think is really interesting because you have, the women, in some cases, in the example you just given us, writing their own keening lyrics. Would you call them lyrics?

Yeah. The words of the lament. And so, you know, 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, you know, 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. It's also going to rise to there, but a completely different way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a rising, but it's not like this. 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's too many talks of fairies and ghosts and banshees. 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. This is, 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 1890s, 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 the celebration and an acknowledgement of what that was comes back in the 1940s as well. Are we good. Keening now? Today, is that part of the revival? I've never seen, I've been to my fair share awakes 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 I think if you were looking for it, the place to go would be the west of Ireland, but my family were 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. Yeah, right in if you're a... Yeah, please do. Let us know. 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. Yeah. So can you explain? 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. 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 and so you would sit with the body in the coffin but that's actually even an added thing up until maybe the last 20, 30 years 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 needs to be observed.

And for instance, I was with my granny when she died a few years back. I can't remember now five or six years ago, I suppose it is. 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, you know, this is in the 21st century. As soon as she died, my mum was like, went to the window and opened the window because that's that's one of those things. You let the soul out. 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. 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 kind of 70 days. But 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. And why the mirror covering? Is that to sort of dissuade vanity in that moment? Because you're going to be reflecting on something else. Is it something about the mirror as a portal? Yes.

You're outlighting the spirit out. 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? It's 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 kind of, there's this quasi-magic element that. that's going on. Quarza. You know, well, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so it really, really persists. As I say, this was five or six years ago, and that window had to be opened. So it's, it's, oh, and one of the ones that I really like is, don't ask me how this

would happen, but I guess it would in the 18th century. If a hen flies over the corpse, that hen has to be killed instantly. That's so specific. It is. Like, I mean, what are you going to do? Just us for the hens. And again, it's this thing about trans. I think my understanding of it is it's the transfer of soul.

You do not want that soul jumping into that hen. You don't want the grandma walking around as a... No, no, no, no. The fox has got a killer. 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dan, you have Irish family, right?

Have you ever been to an Irish wake? I have not been to a bastardized modern Irish way, which is very sad. In Ireland? In Dublin, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel I'm not the right person around the table. But I appreciated immediately the sense that everyone knew what to do. And I think we in England, the UK, have lost. And I see this with my Jewish friends.

I see it with very, you know, friends, I swear in the world. Everyone kind of goes, oh, there's been a death. And then everything kind of, some people bring food. Some people do this. Some people open a bottle or something. 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.

You were talking about that kind of formality that we're bound by in English culture. And I think we've lost the rehearsal of that. We don't have that in everyday life. We don't know what to do necessarily as a society, but we're still clinging to it. And so when we go to an event like that, we're like, well, we have to be formal. Does anyone know what the rules are of this formality? We're in the worst of both worlds. Yeah, exactly.

We've inherited a strange Edwardian formality. Yeah, we're like, we mustn't show any emotion, but we don't know why. We don't know what. Because presumably that served its own purpose, and perhaps that did give strength. But instead we've now lost every, yeah, we're between. 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, buried or whatever. It's a really strange time. It's a kind of limbo time as well, right? Yeah. Could you go back to work? Then you have to take time off again and life is moving, but it's not. So the week, the two nights thing. So presumably this is part, the burial's part of the say, you know what?

It's two nights. Yeah, it's probably... And then the burial happens. And then the... So it used to be like, 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 those time, that time, apart from, you know,

your drinking is part of the, was part of the culture more so than it is now. But certainly there was drink at funerals now. There was pipes passed around, which would be given out. the body, you know, I'm talking about quite a few pipes, corpse pipes, I think they were called. And it was, you know, this was just part of the, and when you take the pipe, you have to say, Lord of mercy. So you're like smoking for the dead person, you know, for their soul. You mean, flushed by like Catholic Church, peace be with you, people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What did they die off? Oh, lung cancer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's what they would have wanted. And so it is, 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 has gone to be. my first Irish outing, over the body would be drinking of, well, many things, but Puccine specifically. And it just so happened. Well, not for Maddie today, I've sniffed it. That's as close as I'm getting a fortune. It's not very nice. We're going to try some. This is actual alcohol. What time is it? We're recording this at half 10 in the morning just to let

everybody know. Anthony's had four shots of this. I've heard. Smell it before we go. Wow. We. It's very fruity. Right. Pass me your glass. What's the measure of I'm going to do a shot measure, right? I mean, obviously that's pretty generous. Oh, is it? Yeah, I'd say too. Tell you how much, how many shots I'm doing in this day and age. Right, we're going to try it.

And have you taste a poachine before? I have. Have you actually? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Slauncher. Slancher. Oh, straight down the match.

Oh, my God, it was a lot. That's, it was a lot. It just embarrassed me that. I took it as a sipping. It was a lot. Anthony just slugged it if you're watching this. If you're listening to this on the video version. Oh, wow.

That was a lot. It's a bit vodka, isn't it? But frutia. Yes, yeah, that's exactly what it is. I'm like, quite to regain some form of composure. Why did I drink the whole thing? Am I supposed to drink the whole thing? And can I just say as well to everyone listening that we have, I think, four or five more episodes to go today? Paint stripper is what that is.

Anyway. So that's taken over the body. That's taken over the body. And listen, this is a very safe and distilled version of this. But people are brewing this at home. It can be really, really strong. made your own alcohol. Oh my God, no. Is it potato-based?

It can be. So barley originally, but then potato, anything starchy, sometimes there was elements of fruit going in there. But it was, the history of poachene in itself is so interesting because of all people, Charles II, outlaws it in Ireland. And yeah, you would imagine he'd be like, bring on the putteen. But 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. It becomes a symbol of defiance. That's interesting. And yet it's also interesting that sometimes

we approach these subjects with the sort of reverence for this ancient tradition. Actually, tobacco relatively recently introduced in the last 400 years. If it was potato-based patina, again, post-Columbian food change. So actually, we'd be wrong

to sort of approach this as we do Stonehenge or something. These traditions are alive. They're evolving throughout Irish history. 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 rip.i.e. So if you haven't heard of this, it's essentially

Facebook for the dead. So as soon as somebody dies, their profile goes up on rip.i.e. Dot i.e is like our dot co.uker.com. And there are pictures up there. As we were preparing for this, I got Freddie, our producer, to go on and look up my granny's profile on RIP.E because everybody goes, everybody goes on there. Are these updated?

Or is this just like a notice board of like grannies now? You get the user generated content. Yeah. So it's where the funeral is going to be. It's whether or not they're having the wake at the family 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,

who can't make it to the funeral, they all leave. So it's like modern Keating and people can put in the comments, well, this one time, Anthony really wronged me. Yeah, it is. It has, oh yeah, good, well done. It has happened that there has, there are moderators and things that had to be removed. And people have had to be removed if it's getting too much. Okay, I know what I'm doing when I get home.

Generally, RIV. 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 homeness 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 6th century or whatever it is. So, you know, it's an ancient tradition we stick to quite proudly. Okay, so you've done the wake. I have. You're quite drunk for the two days. Done the tobacco and all of that.

We then need to take the coffin to the church 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 and 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 and you can I think they're still used in some instances but this is not the case in Ireland right

it's very very very bad to put the coffee down. 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? No. 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.

Were you invited to? No, I just infiltrated the thing. No, they were both grandparents. 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. It gives me so much anxiety, the idea of it slipping off. I don't know. No, really, it is.

It's very anxiety-inducing. And 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. She a bit heavier. 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 some kind of a sheet underneath it. 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. I don't like that. And that grass then needs to be cleansed. and it needs to be... And why, what will happen to me? I'm not sure what the implication is. Is that that it will become like a grave in itself?

I don't know. I really don't know. 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 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...

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... Now we'll say. You know, some brack. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've never seen a coffin put down though.

Really? Never seen that. No. I've never seen that happen. I suppose I haven't either. I mean, it's not... Yeah, you wouldn't. It's sort of 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. It's not far to go. And how do you do it 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. So it's the same.

Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. But often it is the funery 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. And in Ireland, women often don't carry the coffin, but more and more they're doing it now. But because of that, you know, they put all different things.

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. Again, the anxiety that is giving me is... 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 know, you have the things in your hands that you're lowering down into the ground.

So it is, and it just feel like a lot of responsibility, but everyone's just doing it. And you have the undertaker beside you going, stand back up, step, right? You need to ground yourself a little bit more. So he is directing this because he's used to it. This is a really skilled professional. Just to bring this up as well, you are not allowed. Say, for instance, you were on your way to the church. By the way, some of these corpse roads are incredible.

There's one in Kekenni 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 stay together. why you'd be parting? I don't know. I don't know where that group of people are going. Well, because someone's seen the comments on the RIP.I.E.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's like, you know, and I know we're here, and we're talking about it in quite a light way. And we're, you know, it is, 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, you know, 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 because, you know, and that's in my lifetime. So the sanitisation of death, though, is coming into Ireland, but we still do the wake. My granny had a marquee during her wake. That's how many people were there because

she has a family of 11. So, like, there was 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, you know, less dancing. Not no dancing. There was some dancing. Did you dance? I didn't dance, no.

Of course not. Other people did, yeah. You're happy to carry the confidence. I'm not happy to dance. And I celebrate that. Yeah, 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 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 again, the younger generation probably kind of go, God, we have to go to a wake. This is cringe. But actually, what it's doing in terms of community formation. I like it. It's important. There's a lot to be said for it. Nothing definitely when they're the dead ones. Yeah, well, exactly. Yeah, they'll expect it. Yeah. Well, this is the thing. Our grandparents' generation, the wakes are huge. Like, again, my granny had stadium lighting during your wake that we needed to have stadium lighting and overflow car parks. But for my parents' generation, I think that's going to, you'll see that to

come down a little bit because I just don't think we're going to do that in the same way. we yeah it's probably going to filter down a little bit and also there's fewer families with exactly yeah with 11 people so yeah it's a strange strange thing but i kind of love it it's wondering and it's very dramatic and i love that about ireland Ireland's very dramatic like you know we do a good line and drama so yeah i like it before we go yes i want to hear one last superstition from the wake and i think you have a little bit of a story to tell us i do i do am I going to do my Shanaki accent for this? Okay, let's see.

We would expect nothing less. Oh, God, I've been drinking now, and this is what's going to happen. Okay. I'm about to tell you a little story, a little scale, 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 awake. at the hour of nine o'clock. He often heard his father and mother say that it was not right to come

from awake 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. 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 time to play yeah yeah I think it was his he drank a lot and he was staggering up a hill and you know you can hear your heartbeat ears and he had a massive cerebral hemorrhage

oh wow oh my god Dan's going science with this yeah I'm afraid circus from boozing and climbing up a hill in the middle of yeah listen I'm happy to accept a medical explanation for this Maddie oh 100% Supernatural, obviously.

Obviously, yeah, go on. What is it? 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. I mean, I'm asking you. Is it his own boots?

There is no actual answer, but I'll tell you what I think it is from my interpretation of this. I think he's hearing the nails in his own coffin. Oh. Nice. Okay, that makes a lot of them. So he's here, he's foretelling his own death because he, remember I said, we don't pair off. Yeah, we have to stay. day. It's it, 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 awake, don't do it. You are the king of an Irish goodbye. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like, bye guys. I'm not even going to tell you. So yeah, I think he's hearing the nails in his own coffin that night. 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 hear it as the nails. in his coffin. I think you're probably right. Lovely. Well, if you've enjoyed this episode,

then you can leave us a five-star review wherever you get your podcast. Dan, thank you very much for joining us. Hey, thanks so much, guys. That was epic. It really was. And nice to revisit some Irish history after last year's success with Irish... What do we do? The Irish origins of Halloween, yeah, that was it. And now, I've seen that everywhere now, by the way.

We started a trend. Absolutely. I mean, people... It's just become a common assumption. Yeah. Yeah. And it started here. Yeah. We did. We began that. You can get in touch with us if you want to suggest episodes Irish-related or otherwise at After Dark at Historyhit.com. See you next time.