Vernacular Catholicism in Ireland: The Keening Woman
Abstract
:…by convention the bean chaointe was a woman crazed with grief whose appearance and behaviour expressed disorder and a loss of control. In fact, however, her performance, like that of a tragic actor, required considerable intellectual stamina, as well as great reserves of emotion.
1. Wakes
This Nicholas was an extraordinary man for his prowess at keening. He was a living chronicle of all the family pedigrees in the adjoining districts [Kilkenny, Waterford and Tipperary], throughout which…he was universally recognized as a professional keener…On his arriving at the wakehouse there was a great stir and excitement among the people. He respectfully uncovered [his head] on entering, said a prayer or the Latin psalm for the dead, and then took his seat among the female mourners who surrounded the corpse and who in the dresses of the period had an imposing appearance amid the profusion of lights. Strangers…invariably mistook Nicholas’s voice for that of a woman of great oreal [oral] powers so mellifluous and pathetic was it in all the modulations of the song of sorrow—especially in leading the loud wail, in which the females at either side took part at the concluding words of each stanza.
2. Wells
3. The Performative Element
4. The Keening Woman
…the keening woman, the bean chaointe, is the agent of the transition to the next life of the individual whose corpse lies at the heart of the wake assembly, and whose passing is ritually mourned all the way to grave in the highly charged performance of the female practitioners of the caoin.
5. The Keen Itself
- Muise a Phádraig, a Phádraig,Agus a Phádraig bhoicht, tá tú sínte! Ó muise a Phádraig bhoicht,Ceard a dhéanfas mé? Go deo na ndeor gan thú, gan thú!{Pádraig, Pádraig and poor Pádraig, you are stretched!Oh, poor Pádraig, what will I do? Forever and ever without you, without you!)
- A Phádraig, ó hó, a Phádraig!Ba fear insa ngleann thú, agus ba fear ar an ard thú,Ba fear ar an gcladach thú, agus ba fear ar an gcnocán thú.Ara muise, ceard a dhéanfas do Pheadairin bhocht?Agus do mháithrín bhocht?Och, och, ó; a, muise, ochón ó go deo!(Pádraig, oh, Pádraig!You were a man in the valley, you were a man on the hillock.You were a man on the seashore, and you were a man on the hill.
- And what will your poor little Peadar do?And your poor mother?Alas, alas, oh! Alas, alas, oh, forever!)Muise a Phádraig, agus tá tú sínte!Agus do láirín bhreá ag dul síos agus suas an bóthar.Ce tá le hí a mhealladh? Nó ce tá le hí cheangal?Tá tú réidh, tá tú thios! Ara bhó ó go deo!(Pádraig you are stretched!And your fine little mare going up and down the road.Who is there to coax her? Or who is there to tie her up?You are done, you are down! Ah, oh, forever!)
- Ara muise a Phádraig, a Phádraig,A stór agus a Phádraig, a ghrá gheal mo chroí thú!(Pádraig, Pádraig,My love, and Pádraig! Bright love of my heart!)9
I put a snatch of the caoineadh [lament] on tape and the two pints helped me a great deal to do it. I never thought that there was much basis or sense in the keening that was performed over the dead person, in my opinion. When I was a young man, I often saw the keening woman putting their throats out with their wailing over the corpse. It was how they frightened me. When I grew to be a young man, and when I looked at the keeners, I saw that there were very few tears coming from their eyes”.
6. Vernacular Hymns
Poetic texts exist in Gaelic oral tradition, some short, some long, which describe the Passion of Christ and of the Virgin Mary’s grief on Good Friday…. The term ‘caoineadh’ (keening) is often used to refer to them…These texts comprise one expression of a theme worked by artists and writers for a thousand years: the theme of the Passion.(Partridge [Bourke] 1983, p. 4; translation from Irish by Lillis Ó Laoire)
I heard “The Keening of Mary” from a woman of Moycullen. […] I have heard nothing more exquisite than her low sobbing recitative, instinct with a profoundly felt emotion. There was a great horror in her voice at “’S an é sin an casúr” [“and is that the hammer?” (that goes into the coffin)] etc., and with the next stanza the chant rose into a wail. She cried pitifully and struck her breast several times during the recitation.
A Pheadair a aspail, an bhfaca thú mo ghrá bán? (Ochón, is ochón ó)Chonaic mé ar ball é dhá chéasadh ag an ngarda (Ochón, is ochón ó)Cé hé an fear breá sin ar Chrann na Páise?An é nach n-aithníonn tú do Mhac, a Mháithrín?An é sin an Maicín a d’iompair mé trí ráithe?An é sin an Maicín a rugadh in sa stábla?An é sin an Maicín a hoileadh in ucht Mháire?A mhicín mhuirneach, tá do bhéal ‘s do shróinín gearrtha.Is cuireadh calla rúin ar le spídiúlacht óna námhaidIs cuireadh an coróin spíonta ar a mhullach álainnCrochadh suas é ar ghuaillí ardaIs buaileadh anuas é faoi leacrachaí na sráideCuireadh go Cnoc Chailbhearaí é ag méadú ar a PháiseBhí sé ag iompar na Croiche agus Simon lena shálaBuailigí mé féin ach ná bainidh le mo mháithrínMarómuid thú féín agus buailfimid do mháithrínCuireadh tairní maola thrí throithe a chosa agus a lámhaCuireadh an tsleá trína bhrollach álainn.Éist a mháthair, is ná bí cráiteTá mná mo caointe le breith fós a mháthairín.
Oh Peter, apostle, did you see my loved one?I saw him some time ago, tormented by his enemiesWho is that fine man on the Cross of Passion?Don’t you recognize your own son, mother?Is that the son I carried for three trimesters?Is that the son that was born in the stable?Is that the son that I nursed at my breast?My dearest little son, your mouth and nose are bleeding.They dressed him in hair mantle with insults from his enemiesThey put a crown of thorns on his beautiful forehead.They lifted him up high on their shouldersAnd threw him down on the flagstones of the street.He was taken to Calvary Hill to increase his sufferingHe carried the cross and Simon following himYou may beat me, but do not touch my motherWe’ll kill yourself and we’ll beat your motherThere were blunt nails put through his hands and feetThere was a spear put through his beautiful chest.Listen, Mother, and don’t be grievingThe women who’ll weep for me have yet to be born.
The oral tradition of spiritual practice and religious teaching of which women were the chief practitioners became largely unheard of in English-speaking areas, but continued in the Gaeltacht.
7. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
1 | Bean (“ban”) chaointe (“khweentjeh”) means “mourning woman”. |
2 | See, for example, Cara Delay’s work in Irish Women and the Creation of Modern Catholicism, 1850–1950 (Delay 2019). |
3 | “I once heard in West Muskerry, in the county of Cork, a dirge of this kind, excellent in point of both music and words, improvised over the body of a man who had been killed by a fall from a horse, by a young man, the brother of the deceased. He first recounted his genealogy, eulogised the spotless honour of his family, described in the tones of a sweet lullaby his childhood and boyhood, then changing the air suddenly, he spoke of his wrestling and hurling, his skill at ploughing, his horsemanship, his prowess at a fight in a fair, his wooing and marriage, and ended by suddenly bursting into a loud piercing, but exquisitely beautiful wail, which was again and again taken up by the bystanders” (Sullivan 1873, pp. 324–25). |
4 | Duanaire Osraíoch, where this passage is quoted in full (in English), is an edited volume of Gaelic song from the district of Ossory in southeast Ireland. The materials upon which the book is based were collected mostly by John Dunne, (Seán Ó Duinn), James Brennan (Séamas Ó Braonáin) at the behest of John G. A. Prim (1821–75) an antiquarian and newspaper owner, from 1864–7. These manuscripts form part of the National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin. |
5 | See, for example, the profane merriment of New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations (Guglielmi 2020). |
6 | Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TheAranFishermansChild.jpg (accessed on 27 May 2024). |
7 | This was not strictly the case; she is said to have followed some of the old English families in Ireland as well. |
8 | This track, “Caoineadh” by Seán Ó Conghaile, is available for listening on the UNESCO recording Ireland: Traditional Musics of Today, track 103; it is also available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZIibDWULkg (accessed on 4 June 2024). |
9 | Patricia Lysaght (1997), ‘Caoineadh os cionn coirp: The Lament for the Dead in Ireland’, Folklore 108 (1997): 65–82. Appendix 1, 78. Compare Henigan (2016), Orality and Literacy, 73, where she reproduces this text without any stanzaic breaks. |
10 | In Irish: “Chuir mé siolla den chaoineadh ar téip agus bam haith a chuidigh an dá phionta liom le é sin a dhéanamh. Cheap mé riamh nach raibh mórán bunúis ná céille leis na nósanna a bhain le hadhlacadh na marbh. Mar shampla, ní raibh ciall ar bith leis an gcaoineadh a bhítí ag déanamh os cionn an mharbháin, de réir mo thuarimse. Nuair a bhí mé im’ ghasúr óg is minic a chonaic mé na mná caointe ag cur a sceadamán amach agus olagón acu os cionn coirp. Ba é an chaoi a scanraíodh said mé. Nuair a d’fhás mé suas im’ scorach, thug mé faoi deara, agus mé ag breathnú ar na caointeoirí, nach mbíodh mórán deora ar bith ag teacht óna súile”. |
11 | Sean-nós (“old style”) is a fairly new term used to describe unaccompanied songs in the Irish language. Most of the songs are either love songs, laments, or lullabies. Joe Heaney (1919–1984) was widely considered one of the top singers in this style. |
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Williams, S.; Ó Laoire, L. Vernacular Catholicism in Ireland: The Keening Woman. Religions 2024, 15, 879. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15070879
Williams S, Ó Laoire L. Vernacular Catholicism in Ireland: The Keening Woman. Religions. 2024; 15(7):879. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15070879
Chicago/Turabian StyleWilliams, Sean, and Lillis Ó Laoire. 2024. "Vernacular Catholicism in Ireland: The Keening Woman" Religions 15, no. 7: 879. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15070879