Dryden. Palamon and Arcite or; The Knight's Tale from Chaucer. Book III by John Dryden
- The women mix their cries, and clamour fills the fields.
The warlike wakes continued all the night,
And funeral games were played at new returning light.
‘An easy death and a fine funeral’ is a proverbial benediction amongst the lower orders in Ireland. Throughout life the peasant is accustomed to regard the manner and place of his interment as matters of the greatest importance; ‘to be decently put in the earth, along with his own people,’ is the wish most frequently and fervently expressed by him. When advanced in life, it is usual, particularly with those who are destitute and friendless, to deny themselves the common necessaries of life and to hoard up every trifle they can collect for the expenses of their wake and funeral. Looking forward to their death as to a gala given by them to their acquaintances, every possible preparation is made for rendering it, as they consider, ‘creditable;’ their shroud and burial dress are often provided many years before they are wanted; nor will the owners use these garments whilst living, though existing in the most abject
There is evidently a constitutional difference in the composition of the English and Irish peasant; but this peculiarity may be more satisfactorily accounted for by the prevailing belief with the latter of a future state being a material one, and subject to wants even more urgent than those of this life; under this impression, shoes, considered a luxury quite unworthy a thought, are believed almost indispensable after death, when it is supposed much walking has to be performed, probably through rough roads and inclement weather. The superstition evidently proceeds from the tenet of purgatory or qualification for heaven, held by the Romish church; and on this particular, the general belief of the Irish peasantry is somewhat at variance with the representations of their pastors: the priest describes it as a place of fire, but the people imagine it to be a vast and dreary extent, strewed with sharp stones and abounding in thorns and brambles.
The influence of this doctrine affects rich and poor, according to their circumstances, and is a most valuable one, for I have been assured the emolument it yields to the Catholic church of Ireland, by a late limited calculation, exceeds 650,000l. per annum.
The attachment manifested towards particular burial-places arises from the same cause; and the anxiety amongst the vulgar to be interred with their deceased relatives, bestows even on death a feeling of social interest.
A remarkable instance occurred not long since. An old beggar woman, who died near the city of Cork, requested that her body might be deposited in White Church burial ground. Her daughter, who was without the means to obtain a hearse or any other mode of conveyance, determined herself to undertake the task, and, having
This national trait may be recognized in an advertisement copied from the Sydney Gazette of the 1st October, 1814, the existing regulations of which colony oblige every person to give public notice of their departure.
‘Dennis Hurley, intending to quit the colony in the Seringapatam, to visit the land of his forefathers, where he hopes, after this life of toil and trouble, to rest under his native turf, requests that all claims against him may be presented for payment.’ Mr. Hurley, I presume, was one of those ‘real patriots’
who, be it understood,
Have left their country for their country's good.’’
Separate interests (as in the case of marriage) often cause disputes at funerals; and as no acknowledged rule exists in such cases, a battle usually ends the dissension, and the corpse is borne away in triumph by the victorious party to a cemetery perhaps twenty miles distant from that originally intended.
At a Roman Catholic clergyman's funeral, which took place recently in the South of Ireland, the fathers of his order were opposed by the relations of the deceased, who wished the coffin to be conveyed to their family vault, but the attempt proved fruitless, as the fathers, anticipating opposition timely, procured so strong a force that the assailing faction was beat off, and a guard was stationed on the grave for some weeks after to prevent the dead man's resurrection, should it be attempted.
I remember once overhearing a contest between a poor man and his wife, respecting the burial of their infant. The woman wished to have the child laid near some of her own relations, which the husband strongly opposed, concluding her attachment to her friends
Another instance of similar superstition occurred in the case of a woman, who presented several beggars with a loaf and porringer, that her deceased child might not want a porringer or bread in the next world. She accounted for her knowledge of the wants of an after-state by saying that a very good man, who used to have occasional trances, in which it was known his soul left his body and became familiar with disembodied spirits, returning to its former habitation after a short absence, told her, on his recovery from one of these fits, that children, dying at an early age, whose parents' neglect deprived them of the use of a porringer, were obliged to lap milk out of their hands; whilst others, who were provided in life with one, had a similar article prepared for their comfort in a future state; and ‘now,’ continued the woman, as she bestowed her last loaf and porringer on a mendicant, ‘my mind is eased of its burthen, and my poor child is as happy as the best of them.’
Many other anecdotes of the same nature might be related, but these are sufficient for the purpose of illustration.
The belief also of a similarity between spiritual and mortal existence extends, not merely to necessities, but to points of etiquette.
It is a general opinion amongst the lower orders, that the last buried corpse has to perform an office like that of ‘fag’ in our public schools by the junior boy, or at a regimental mess by the youngest officer; and that the attendance on his churchyard companions is only relieved by the interment of some other person. The notion may seem too absurd, yet serious consequences have sometimes resulted from it; and an instance comes within my recollection where two funerals, proceeding to the same burial-ground, arrived within view of each other a short distance from their place of destination.
It is a prevalent notion that the ghost of a stranger is seldom well received by the ancient possessors of a churchyard, particularly if it has long been reserved to a clan or sept, when the ‘cuggeriegh,’ or intruder, is sadly annoyed by his associates. There is in this a strange variation between life and death in the Irish character, as the trait of hospitality towards strangers is proverbially predominant while living.
When priests, or others noted for their sanctity, die, their graves are resorted to for some of the clay, which is mingled with water and drank for the cure of various diseases.
Sir Richard Musgrave mentions that earth from the grave of Father Sheehy, who was executed about the middle of the last century as the leader of some White Boy outrages, was held in great repute, and taken away so rapidly, on account of its supernatural powers, that the sexton had more than once to renew the covering. Recent cases may be named, where this custom has been carried to such lengths that it was interdicted under the threat of exemplary punishment.
The wake of a corpse is a scene of merriment rather than of mourning. The body lies exposed in the coffin for two or three nights previous to interment, surrounded by many candles, and with the face uncovered. To avert misfortune arising from the death of the heads of families, when a man dies his head is placed at the foot of the bed; but this ceremony is not deemed necessary with women, and they are allowed to remain in the usual position. In the evening a general assembly of the neighbours takes place, when they are entertained with whiskey, tobacco and snuff. On these occasions songs are sung and stories related, while the younger part of the
An Irish funeral procession will present to the English traveller a very novel and singular aspect. The coffin is carried on an open hearse, with a canopy supported by four pillars, not unlike the car used at Lord Nelson's funeral; it is adorned with several devices in gold, and drawn by four horses, and is, perhaps, more impressive to the beholder, than the close caravan-like conveyance used in England; but what is gained in solemnity by the principal feature, is suddenly destroyed by the incongruity of the rest of the train, generally composed of a few postchaises, the drivers in their daily costume of a long great coat and slouched hat. In addition to these, I have seen a gig
The open hearse is common throughout Ireland, and that used by the poorer classes becomes perfectly grotesque, from the barbarous paintings of saints and angels with which it is bedizened. The concourse of persons who attend the funeral of an opulent farmer, or a resident landlord, is prodigious. Not only those to whom the deceased was known, but every one who meets the procession, turns to accompany it, let his haste be ever so great, for a mile or two, as nothing is accounted more unlucky, or unfriendly, than to neglect doing so.
The funeral of a gentleman acknowledged as the head of a clan (now an event of rare occurrence, and almost solely confined to the county Kerry) is one of those sights it is impossible to behold without feeling sublime sensations. The vast multitude, winding through some romantic defile, or trailing along the base of a wild mountain, while the chorus of the death-song, coming fitfully upon the breeze, is raised by a thousand voices. On a closer view, the aged nurse is seen sitting on the hearse beside the coffin, with her body bent over it; her actions dictated by the most violent grief, and her head completely enveloped in the deep hood of her large cloak, which falls in broad and heavy folds, producing altogether a most mysterious and awful figure.
Then at every cross-road, such roads being considered symbolic of their faith, there is a general halt; the men uncover their heads, and a prayer is offered up for the soul of their departed chief.
The Irish funeral howl is notorious, and although this vociferous expression of grief is on the decline, there is still, in the less civilized
In the fourth volume of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, the musical notation of one of these lamentations may be seen; and Dr. O'Brien, in his Irish Dictionary, describes the keen20 as — ‘a cry for the dead, according to certain loud and mournful notes, and verses, wherein the pedigree, land, property, generosity and good actions of the deceased person, and his ancestors, are diligently and harmoniously recounted, in order to excite pity and compassion in the hearers, and to make them sensible of their great loss in the death of the person whom they lament.’
Having a curiosity to hear the Keen more distinctly sung than over a corpse, when it is accompanied by a wild and inarticulate uproar as a chorus, I procured an elderly woman, who was renowned for her skill in keening, to recite for me some of these dirges. This woman, whose name was Harrington, led a wandering kind of life, travelling from cottage to cottage about the country, and though in fact subsisting on charity, found every where not merely a welcome, but had numerous invitations, on account of the vast store of Irish verses she had collected, and could repeat. Her memory was indeed extraordinary; and the clearness, quickness, and elegance with which she translated from the Irish into English, though unable to read or write, is almost incredible. Before she commenced repeating, she mumbled for a short time, probably the beginning of each stanza, to assure herself of the arrangement, with her eyes closed, rocking her body backwards and forwards, as if keeping time to the measure of
From several keens which I took down from this woman's dictation, I have selected four, and to each I have attached a short explanatory introduction. They will doubtless appear to the English reader odd combinations of the sublime and vulgar..
1. A keen composed on Sir Richard Cox the historian, who died in 1733; the first verse presents a curious picture of Irish hospitality.
‘My love and darling, though I never was in your kitchen, yet I have heard an exact account of it. The brown roast meat continually coming from the fire; the black boilers continually boiling; the cock of the beer-barrel for ever running; and if even a score of men came in, no person would inquire their business; but they would give them a place at your table, and let them eat what they pleased, nor would they bring a bill in the morning to them.’
‘My love and friend, I dreamed through my morning slumbers, that your castle fell into decay, and that no person remained in it. The birds sung sweetly no longer, nor were there leaves upon the bushes; all was silence and decay! — the dream told me that our beloved man was lost to us — that the noble horseman was gone! the renowned Squire Cox!’
‘My love and darling, you were nearly related to the Lord of Clare, and to O'Donovan of Bawnlehan; to Cox with the blue eyes
2. Is the lamentation of a man named O'Donoghue, of Affadown, or Roaring Water, in the west of the county Cork, for his three sons and son-in-law, who were drowned. ‘The wild geese,’ an idiom used in the last verse, was a popular name given to such young men as volunteered into the Irish brigade.
‘It was on a rainy Monday; a fair gale blew, and my sons left the shore an half an hour before sun-rise to fish in the sea; my children were driven far away to be drowned. This year has been the year of my ruin for ever!’
‘Cormick (Charles), my eldest child, he could kill with his gun every bird that flew in air, — the wild duck, and the partridge, and the grouse, and black plover of the lonesome mountains!’
‘Cormick, my dear! — flower of young men, who was mild and well educated, who was just and pure and good! — Oh! glorious King of Heaven, if thou hadst but spared him to me! — It was the loss of him that broke my heart entirely; I might — I could have parted with the rest.’
‘Daniel, my dear Daniel, the youngest of my sons, it was this day fortnight he was washed on shore, without strength or life in his body. I saw him as he lay lifeless upon the shore, and my heart was cold and dumb and motionless at the sight!’
‘Children, dear children, do you pity me? do you see me? look on me, your poor father crying and lamenting for the sunshine of his eyes; for the life of his life, for the soul of his soul; what is he now? — a poor broken hearted old man, weeping alone in the cold corner of a stranger's house!’
‘Great is my grief and sorrow! sadness and tears weigh heavy on
‘Great is my grief and sorrow that you did not all go from your father on board ship! — or if my sons had left me for a season, like the wild geese, to go to a foreign land, then might I have expected from my Maker the help of my four mild and clever young men at some future time.’
3. About the middle of the last century, Mr. O'Sullivan the younger, of Beerhaven, or, as he was called, Morty Oge O'Sullivan, possessed considerable influence in the west of the county Cork. The chief of a rude and mountainous district, and supported by a numerous and hardy body of dependants, he had long set both the laws and magisterial authority at defiance. Grown confident in his own strength, and fearless of legal punishment, he became an agent for the French and Spanish governments, enlisting men for their service in Ireland, and transporting them in a vessel of his own to the continent. Mr. Puxley, a neighbouring gentleman of respectability, laid informations before the secretary of state, of such notoriously disloyal conduct, and O'Sullivan, actuated by revenge, having by some means gained intelligence, waylaid and shot Mr. Puxley on his return from church. This daring assassination called for a particular visitation, and on the 2d May, 1754, a party of military, commanded by Lieutenant Appleton, was despatched from Cork to Beerhaven, where they arrived on the Saturday following about midnight. O'Sullivan, expecting an attack, had fortified his residence, and posted sentinels, who were surprised; but the barking of a dog alarmed the inmates, and they obstinately defended themselves for some time, until the house was set on fire, when O'Sullivan, appearing at the door, was shot through the heart.
The vessel employed by O'Sullivan in carrying on his illegal traffic with France was immediately sunk by a king's cutter sent round for the purpose, to the stern of which his body being lashed, was towed through the water to Cork; his head was afterwards spiked on the south gaol of that city, and his remains interred in a bastion of the New Fort.
Connell was the confidential servant of this disaffected character, and is reported to have composed and sung the present threnody, the night previous to his execution.
‘Murty, my dear and loved master, you carried the sway for strength and generosity. It is my endless grief and sorrow — sorrow which admits of no comfort, that your white head should be gazed at as a shew upon a spike, and that your noble frame is without life.’
‘I have travelled with you, my dear and much loved master, in foreign lands, and through various provinces and counties, and in the royal prince's army, when we moved with kings. But it is through the means of Puxley that I am left in grief and confinement in Cork, locked in heavy irons, and without the hope of being released.’
‘The great God is good and merciful! I ask his grace and pardon, and his support, for I am to be hanged at the gallows to-morrow without doubt; the rope will squeeze my neck, and thousands will lament my fate, but may the Lord have mercy upon my master! it was for his sake that I am now in their power.’
‘Kerryonians (Kerrymen), pray for us! sweet and melodious is your voice, my blessing I give to you, but you will never see me again amongst you alive; our heads will be upon a spike as a shew,
‘Oh! that I was ever born! — oh! that I ever returned to Beerhaven! Mine was the best of masters that Ireland could produce; may our souls be floating to-morrow in the rays of endless glory!’
‘The lady his wife, heavy is her grief, and who may wonder at that, were her eyes even made of green stone; when he, her dear husband, was shot by that ball? If he had retreated, our grief might have been lighter, but the brave man would not, for the pride of his country, retreat.’
‘He has been in kings' palaces, and in Spain he got a pension; the lady of Clare gave him robes bound with gold lace as a token of remembrance. He became a captain on the coast of France, and yet should he return to Ireland for us to lose him.’
‘There is a lady in London who expects him every day with his vessel.’
The rest wanting.21
- The sun on Ivera no longer shines brightly;
The voice of her music no longer is sprightly;
No more to her maidens the light dance is dear,
Since the death of our darling, O'Sullivan Bear.
- Scully! thou false one, you basely betrayed him,
In his strong hour of need when thy right hand should aid him;
He fed thee, he clad thee, you had all could delight thee,
You left him, you sold him, may Heav'n requite thee!
- Scully! may all kinds of evil attend thee!
On thy dark road of life may no kind one befriend thee!
May fevers long burn thee, and agues long freeze thee!
May the strong hand of God in his red anger seize thee!
- Had he died calmly I would not deplore him;
Or if the wild strife of the sea-war closed o'er him;
But with ropes round his white limbs through oceans to trail him,
Like a fish after slaughter, 'tis therefore I wail him.
- Long may the curse of his people pursue them;
Scully, that sold him, and soldier that slew him!
One glimpse of Heav'n's light, may they see never;
May the hearth-stone of hell be their best bed for ever.
- In the hole, which the vile hands of soldiers had made thee;
Unhonoured, unshrouded, and headless they laid thee;
No sigh to regret thee, no eye to ram o'er thee,
No dirge to lament thee, no friend to deplore thee.
- Dear head of my darling! how gory and pale
These aged eyes see thee, high spik'd on their gaol!
Thy cheek in the summer sun ne'er shall grow warm;
Nor that eye e'er catch light, but the flash of the storm.
- A curse, blessed ocean, is on thy green water,
From the haven of Cork, to Ivera of slaughter;
Since thy billows were dyed with the red wounds of fear,
Of Muiertach Oge, our O'Sullivan Bear.- The Lament for O'Sullivan Beare (made by his Nurse), Jeremiah Joseph Callanan
The account given of this lamentation, called the ‘Smith's Keenan,’ is at once simple and romantic. A young man (a smith) left his widowed mother and sisters, who resided at Killavullian on the Blackwater, and married in a distant part of the country. Some time after, one of his sisters, hearing that he was ill, set out to see him, but before she reached her destination, the night came on, which compelled her, being ignorant of the way, to seek shelter at a cottage on the road side; here she found the inmates preparing to proceed to a wake in the village where her brother resided, and going forward with them, on arrival discovered it to be her brother's wake, at the sight of whose
‘Brother, dear brother! your long absence from home did not raise you in this world, you left us, and you found a wife who knew not how to love you. No one here knows your family, you are in the midst of strangers; they only know that you were a smith, and son of a smith, from the Blackwater's side!’
‘Oh! if I had your cold limbs by the Blackwater's side, or on the banks of the small river (the Awbeg), or by the Bride; Mary and Kate and Julia would cry over you, and our mother would cry most sweetly for you; and I, oh! I would cry more than them all for you!’
‘Oh! brother, dear brother — I might have known that you were laid low, when I did not hear the sound of your forge, or of your sledges, striking strong and noisy!’
‘Dear brother, and my darling brother, you have the marks of a wife that did not love you; she left my brother hungry in the winter, and dry in the summer; without a Sunday dress, and the sufferer from long fasting:’
‘You woman, his wife! my brother's wife, you woman with the dry eyes; you woman who are both dumb and deaf; go home! go any where, leave your husband to me, and I will mourn for my brother.’
‘You woman above with the dry eyes! my brother's wife, come down, and I will keen you; you will get another husband if you are young enough: but I can never get a brother!’
(The priest comes forward and speaks.)
‘Hold your tongue, stubborn stranger, why will you provoke your brother's wife?’
(She answers.)
‘Hold your tongue, stubborn priest! read your Litany and Confiteor: earn your half-crown and begone: I will keen my brother.’
‘These examples of the keen, notwithstanding their inequality of sentiment, and the injury sustained by a literal translation, will not, I am confident, appear wholly destitute of merit, although it is evident there are many passages and allusions, which those unacquainted with local manners and history, can neither feel nor understand correctly. But under any circumstances, the natural expression of sorrow awakens our sympathy, for the simple language of grief is always poetical.’
The national exclamations used on the death of a friend or an acquaintance are often very figurative: ‘May the heavens be his perch to-night!’ is no uncommon ejaculation, on first hearing of the loss of such. What an original metaphor is this, and what a fine allegorical picture does it present! the soul springing upwards like a bird, and resting its weary wings after the flight, in some ‘bower of bliss.’
Nor are keens merely orally preserved amongst the peasantry. I have three original Irish death-songs in M.S. now lying before me, the most recent of which, on a namesake of my own, is dated 21st January, 1822, and consists of thirteen verses, not worth translating, but the English preface prefixed to it is curious, as a specimen of the modern bardic spirit, and is transcribed verbatim.
‘I can most undoubtedly testify that since the death of Captain O'Sullivan Beer Haven, I did not see nor hear any man died so much regretted for, nor even so free from the least stain or blemish attached to his character, as the most worthy and much lamented Edward Croker, Esq. near Curriglass.’ ‘Declared and certified by me the poet, William Cremon.’
Keens are also a medium through which the disaffected circulate
Those criminals whose lives have been forfeited in the cause of rebellion, derive no small consolation from the idea of martyrdom, which they imagine they have attained, and in this they are encouraged by the popular voice, apostrophising their shade as that of an hero and a patriot. Their countrymen are called upon to revenge their death, and to recover the estates of their Milesian ancestors, whose spirit has alone descended to them; on that spirit and what it will achieve, many verses are frequently bestowed. It is compared to the mountain-eagle, that, even in bondage, the hand of strangers could not tame; to the mountain-torrent, that would suddenly burst forth with overwhelming inundation, and destroy the lands where the cold hearted Saxons revelled.
When the awful sentence of death has been pronounced by the judge on an Irish culprit, it is not unusual for him to petition that his body may be given to his friends after execution, and, if this is granted, he meets his fate with fortitude and resignation. Those, who from their official capacity have been obliged to witness such distressing scenes, have often expressed their surprize at the dying declaration of men who were convicted on the clearest and most unquestionable evidence, that they were innocent of the crime for which they were about to suffer, and this assertion has been supported by the most solemn appeals to the Deity. It is only charitable to consider so palpable a falsehood uttered by those on the very brink of eternity, as the result of absolution on the ignorant mind; the doctrine by which the murderer can conscientiously declare his innocence has something in it irreconcilably opposed to truth and reason.
If a complete account of the crimes and conduct at the place of execution of those who had been convicted by the law in Ireland since the Articles of Limerick, could now be drawn up, I am persuaded it would afford a moral and political view of the country, the result of which would surprize even the best acquainted with these subjects. Dean Swift appears to have entertained the same idea, and he accordingly made a collection of the printed dying speeches of Irish culprits, which he enriched with his own invaluable comments: one of the volumes of this series was in my possession for a short time, whence I take some extracts, to give an idea of the general tenour of the dying speeches of the last century. The first of these explains the point of copyright in such matters, the others are distinguished by their soundness of reasoning.
‘The last speech and dying words of Valentine Kealy and Cornealus Sulivan, who is both to be executed near St. Stephen's green, this present Saturday, being the 13th instant, March, 1724-5, for robberys committed by them.’
Good people,I am advised by several of my acquaintances to give my speech from my own mouth to some printer, in order to prevent others of that trade from printing sham speeches of me; therefore (by their perswations) I sent for the printer in Montrath Street, to whom I made the following true speech, and if any other prints it, I assure you it is false, &c.
Dear Christians,I at first had no thoughts to make any speech, by reason I am far from my friends or relations, but seeing my fellow sufferer doing it I thought fit to do the same, which is in manner following &c.
Captain M'Dermot, who was hanged at Cavan on the 30th March, 1725, for murder, explains his situation thus: ‘And I, who was taught to read the Latin, English, and Irish tongues, and was naturally complaisant to all mankind, am here made an example for the sins of my forefathers.’
As a companion to this, is ‘an elegy on the death of Mr. Jo. Foe, who unfortunately departed this life at Kilmainham gallows, October 20th, 1725.’
The first edition of the Cork Remembrancer, a book which should rather be entitled the Cork Criminal Recorder, published in 1783, and compiled by a Mr. Fitzgerald, contains the particulars of almost every execution in that city, during the preceding half century. I have been told that the author of this singular chronicle made a point of being present at the death of every criminal whose exit he has recorded, and he generally marched in the procession from the gaol to the gallows: on one occasion it is reported of Mr. Fitzgerald, that, being confined to his bed by a severe illness, he actually petitioned the judge to postpone an execution, until he was sufficiently recovered to become a spectator.