After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal Truth About Irish Funeral Beliefs
Oct 30, 2025
Dan Snow, a renowned historian, shares fascinating insights into Irish funerary customs. He delves into the origins of keening, revealing its ancient roots and the gender dynamics behind its practice. Snow explains the intimate rituals of Irish wakes, including unique traditions like corpse pipes and the taboo against placing coffins on grass. The discussion contrasts the communal approach to death in Ireland with more sanitized practices elsewhere, painting a vivid picture of cultural beliefs surrounding mourning.
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Keening As Formal Mourning Ritual
- Keening was a formal, paid, and gendered mourning performance led by women in Ireland for over a thousand years.
- It combined structured melody and improvisation and persisted into the 20th century despite repression.
Control Drove Keening Suppression
- Authorities opposed keening because it was labelled pagan, female-led, and monetized.
- Suppression mixed religious, political and economic control motives rather than purely moral concerns.
Expressive Grief Versus Western Restraint
- Keening and wakes exposed cultural tension between expressive communal grief and Westernized restrained funerary norms.
- Dan Snow links this to wider civilizational friction over public physicality and emotion.