IRELAND IN 1872.

CHAPTER I.

IRELAND IN TRANSITION.

An Irish Funeral-Wakes-Fairs-Ireland of Last Generation-Since the Famine-Social Changes-National Progress.

I

WAS sauntering one day in Killarney, watching

the Kerry peasants at their marketing, when a great crowd was seen moving up the long main street of the town. As it drew near it proved to be a funeral, and I heard what, from description, I knew to be the "keen" or wail of mourners. There were about a dozen elderly women, in two rows, walking in front of the hearse. They had the long cloaks and the hooded shawls or kerchiefs of the country. One woman seemed to be the chief keener, leading the dirge, the others joining in the melancholy wail. In an Irish car following the hearse were four women, relatives of the deceased. Every now and then they also uttered cries, the natural and unchecked

expressions of passionate grief, less formal than the keen of the old women in front, but in the same minor key of plaintive tone. Ten or twelve cars, carts, and various vehicles followed with female mourners, and a dense crowd on foot closed up the procession. The burial was to be at a rural churchyard some miles off. Shutters were put up in the shops of the town, and every mark of respect paid as the funeral passed by.

In reply to enquiries, I learned that the deceased was a tradesman of the town, an O'Donoghue, "come of dacent people." "Was he an old man?" "No, he was only a boy," which might denote any age from ten to fifty or more. "Were these keeners paid?" "No, they attend only out of respect to the family." The use of professional keeners or hired mourners is going out. These old women, however, were experienced performers, and the "keening" will not soon be a thing of mere tradition. The women will continue to be paid, in kind if not in coin, for there is always hospitable supply in houses between the time of death and burial. A "dacent funeral" implies many guests, though not necessarily with the scandalous scenes of former times.

In Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall's "Ireland" the writers say, "We followed, in 1858, a funeral to Aghadoe; there were attendant keeners, who chaunted the death

song nearly all the way. The 'keen' is not often heard now-a-days, and the ceremonies connected with death have of late lost much of their earlier, more picturesque, but more barbarous accompaniments." Hundreds of tourists have visited Ireland without hearing the "keen," and I was told that I might be many years without seeing a funeral such as I had witnessed at Killarney. It was a strange and

unexpected incident, and as the wild wail echoed in my memory, the whole scene seemed representative of the transition state of Ireland, and of a time when many "old things are passing away."

Wakes, with their strange medley of mourning and merry-making, are becoming rarer, even in rural districts. The clergy, greatly to their credit, discountenance and even from the altar denounce them, on account of the irreverence and immorality to which they gave occasion. There was never a death in a house but the place was for two or three days and nights made a common resort for the friends and neighbours of the deceased. Among the poor peasants the guests brought their own supplies of drink and tobacco, but in a farmer's house all comers were entertained at the host's expense The original intention of watching and bewailing the dead became a very secondary affair to the gossiping and revelry that brought disgrace on the ancient usage.