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The Revival of Keening: Ireland’s Ancient Grief Ritual Returns
7 Plays7 months ago
In this episode of the Glam Reaper Podcast, Jennifer has a thoughtful conversation with Kevin Toolis, a writer and BAFTA-winning filmmaker, as they dive into the often overlooked aspects of death and the rituals that surround it.
Kevin shares stories from his Irish and Scottish roots, reflecting on how these cultural traditions have shaped his views on life and death. He introduces the Irish wake, a communal and therapeutic practice that offers a striking contrast to modern funeral customs. Drawing from his book, My Father's Wake, Kevin reveals how the open nature of Irish wakes provides a space for grieving and healing, emphasizing the importance of properly honoring the dead.
Tune in to explore the timeless rituals that influence our understanding of life, death, and the healing power of communal grief.
Key Topics:
-Kevin Toolis shares his deep cultural roots and family history
-The healing power of the Irish wake in grief
-How modern funeral practices change our way of grieving
-The comforting role of keening in collective mourning
-The keening festival’s efforts to keep these rituals alive
Quotes From The Episode:
“The first best hope of life is that you will be born into a family and people who will love you and the last best hope of life is that you will die within a community who will love you too”
- Kevin Toolis
“We kind of are born into this world, naked, with no shame, no guilt, you know nothing, and then we go back basically naked”
- Jennifer Muldowney
Timestamp:
[00:00] Podcast Intro
[00:23] Kevin shares insights about his Irish and Scottish heritage, his life on Achill Island, and his book on the traditional Irish wake.
[05:28] Kevin elaborates on his book "My Father's Wake: How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love, and Die.
[09:36] Jennifer reflects on the complexities of Irish attitudes toward death and funerals.
[15:17] Kevin contrasts the differences between Irish and English funeral practices.
[17:29] Jennifer shares her perspective on the importance of modernizing the Irish wake to create personalized.
[20:02] Kevin discussed the ancient and cross-cultural tradition of keening.
[25:22] Kevin conveyed that the Keening Festival was a tremendous success.
[27:15] Kevin emphasized that the festival is designed to be participatory rather than academic.
[28:50] Outro
Connect with Kevin Toolis:
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/kevin-toolis-43a48912
Website - www.wondersofthewake.com
Instagram - @thewondersofthewake
Twitter/X - @KevinToolis
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/kevin.toolis/
Connect with Jennifer/The Glam Reaper on socials at:
Facebook Page - Memorials
https://www.facebook.com/MuldowneyMemorials/
Instagram - @muldowneymemorials
Email us - glamreaperpodcast@gmail.com
Listen to The Glam Reaper Podcast on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-glam-reaper-podcast/id1572382989?i=1000525524145
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWe3sNoPny6UsMGYoYDeXfw
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
behind after the funeral or all that, your life will resume.
00:00:03
Speaker
So wakes, keening, all of these arts really are to bring you through that death process, the realisation of kind of therapeutic.
Introduction and Kevin's Heritage
00:00:13
Speaker
PIANO PLAYS
00:00:27
Speaker
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:30
Speaker
I'm your host, Jennifer Muldeny, a.k.a.
00:00:32
Speaker
The Glam Reaper.
00:00:34
Speaker
And on today's episode, I'm very excited because I am joined by a fellow Irishman, although kind of Scotsman, we'll get into it, but it is the amazing author, filmmaker and recent band member, which we'll get into also,
00:00:45
Speaker
Kevin Toulis.
00:00:47
Speaker
Kevin, nice to meet you.
00:00:49
Speaker
Hi, Jennifer.
00:00:50
Speaker
Nice to meet you too across the ocean.
00:00:52
Speaker
I am literally in Ackill Island.
00:00:54
Speaker
So the only thing between us is just 3000 miles of water.
00:00:56
Speaker
Whim.
00:00:58
Speaker
Just a little bath, just a little bit of water.
00:01:00
Speaker
So you are actually an Ackle, amazing.
00:01:02
Speaker
But you were born in Scotland.
00:01:03
Speaker
I love the Scottish.
00:01:04
Speaker
I actually just got to Scotland at the start of this year doing a celebration of life, which was incredible.
00:01:10
Speaker
Scotland, oh, it's just so beautiful.
00:01:12
Speaker
But you're Irish.
00:01:14
Speaker
You recognise yourself as being Irish, is it?
00:01:16
Speaker
Well, both my parents are Ackle Islanders and we spend every summer here and we have a family house.
00:01:23
Speaker
We're actually even so old on the island that we were here when the English soldiers came in 1834 to name the place.
00:01:29
Speaker
So some of the local townland is named after our family.
00:01:33
Speaker
So we're very kind of Irish.
00:01:35
Speaker
Strangely, sometimes when I speak to the Irish Irish, because I grew up in this Ackle Island tradition, my Irishness is kind of older than them.
00:01:45
Speaker
I've been on the bog years.
00:01:48
Speaker
played weight games we could talk about that yeah kind of mock the dead uh saved hay basically played the full role of being a small irish peasant child from the ages of six onwards and then obviously i lived away in edinburgh too but i'm back living on the island now back in the ancestral village
00:02:08
Speaker
Okay, and so you are back, you're permanently back living there because I know there was London then for a bit, I believe.
00:02:14
Speaker
And so just for everyone who's not Irish and listening to this, so it will be interesting and I'm sure we'll touch on it at certain
English Influence on Irish Culture
00:02:22
Speaker
points.
00:02:22
Speaker
So I'm from Dublin, Ireland.
00:02:24
Speaker
which is the capital of Ireland, even though there's some arguments that Corde likes to claim that.
00:02:29
Speaker
But anyway, and a lot of people don't know or they'll ask me sort of, Jen, you don't sound like everybody else from Ireland.
00:02:36
Speaker
And I just recently this weekend explained to somebody that mostly people from Dublin sound a little bit more like English people because...
00:02:46
Speaker
They were more English takeover in Dublin.
00:02:48
Speaker
We were kind of where where they they had us most.
00:02:52
Speaker
So there's less people who speak Irish Gaelic Gaelic in Dublin than there are when you go West, when you go to Galway, Mayo, stuff like that.
00:03:00
Speaker
And I thankfully grew up going to Gaeltox, which is Irish school.
00:03:04
Speaker
And so I do still have my Irish language.
00:03:06
Speaker
Thank God.
00:03:07
Speaker
I love that actually when I'm able to talk to Irish people here in New York about other people in the Irish language.
00:03:13
Speaker
But you're from an island that's off Ireland.
00:03:17
Speaker
So you're actually, yeah, you're closest to me here in New York, really.
00:03:20
Speaker
Yeah, we're 100 metres from the ocean.
00:03:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:23
Speaker
In terms of Ackal Irish, there is a kind of particular dialect here.
00:03:27
Speaker
Now, I'm terrible at languages, so I can't speak Irish.
00:03:30
Speaker
But okay.
00:03:31
Speaker
It's a very kind of individual dialect, which is very influenced by Ulster Irish.
00:03:37
Speaker
Yes.
00:03:37
Speaker
They don't say Manaw, they say Imra.
00:03:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:41
Speaker
They don't say Galaher, they say Galaher.
00:03:45
Speaker
Yes, the accents.
00:03:46
Speaker
It's been very interesting actually being over here and hearing Donegal Irish, Cork Irish and just the different the different twangs.
00:03:54
Speaker
But we won't get into the Irish language and because we don't have off day, even though maybe we'll have to bring you back
Exploring 'My Father's Wake'
00:04:00
Speaker
again for that.
00:04:00
Speaker
But Kevin, one of the main reasons we connected is you wrote a book many years ago.
00:04:07
Speaker
It's probably it's not a decade.
00:04:08
Speaker
I don't think yet, but about the Irish way.
00:04:11
Speaker
Now, what we do over here with Muldowny Memorials, I like to say it's almost like the wake 2.0.
00:04:17
Speaker
So it's bringing back in food, drinks, that kind of joyful memory, you know, sharing of food and drinks, whether the body's present or whether it's cremated remains or however,
00:04:28
Speaker
And the person is present, bringing that back into what a funeral kind of became.
00:04:34
Speaker
It became a little bit cliche, a bit cookie cutter.
00:04:37
Speaker
And so that's, you know, yeah, I was raised and that was the interesting thing reading your book is it was slightly different to my upbringing in Ireland.
00:04:47
Speaker
Probably because I'm from Dublin and Dublin will be like New York versus Ohio, I guess, you know, in terms of just the way Dublin became a lot more commercialized really quick and stuff.
00:04:58
Speaker
So like the removals left Dublin funerals a lot quicker than it has down the country yet.
00:05:04
Speaker
But I still did wake, wake, do the wakes with the body physically being in the room, open casket, you know, sharing food and drink around the body.
00:05:12
Speaker
So tell us a little bit about the book, if you don't mind, for people who don't know about it and who are going to go out and get it hopefully after this.
00:05:19
Speaker
So the title of the book is My Father's Wake, How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love and Die.
00:05:24
Speaker
And really it's both a personal memoir, but it's a sort of guidebook about what the wake means, why do people do it.
00:05:32
Speaker
And I suppose it's principally grounded in my own father Sonny's death.
00:05:36
Speaker
On the island.
00:05:37
Speaker
Now Sonny had a. He had a pretty hard death.
00:05:41
Speaker
In the sense he had pancreatic cancer.
00:05:43
Speaker
But he had a great death.
00:05:44
Speaker
In terms of like having an Irish wake.
00:05:47
Speaker
Meaning he really had the.
00:05:48
Speaker
You might call the sort of full bells and whistles job.
00:05:51
Speaker
He even had like a pre-wake.
00:05:53
Speaker
Where a lot of people came to see him.
00:05:55
Speaker
Knowing that he was dying.
00:05:56
Speaker
And they came to say goodbye.
00:05:58
Speaker
And so there was actually a line of people like it was almost like a wedding house to be a line of people in the morning.
00:06:03
Speaker
Sometimes he was tired, didn't want to see them.
00:06:05
Speaker
Other times they came to say goodbye and there was no kind of shame in it.
00:06:09
Speaker
There's an awful lot of openness.
00:06:11
Speaker
And really, it sort of reflects the fact that there's many great things about Ireland.
00:06:16
Speaker
But one of the really great things is the openness around death so that people aren't afraid to say, oh, I kind of hear you're dying.
00:06:23
Speaker
I bumped into an old man the other day and he said, oh, did you hear, Kevin?
00:06:27
Speaker
I've got cancer of the spleen and it spread to the bowel and blah, blah, blah.
00:06:30
Speaker
But I'm feeling great.
00:06:32
Speaker
And that was the opening conversation.
00:06:34
Speaker
Other thing, essentially, of course, is that when people do die, there's a week, they often like they either die at home or they die in hospital.
00:06:42
Speaker
But the person is taken home.
00:06:43
Speaker
Lots of neighbors come around.
00:06:46
Speaker
The body's there.
00:06:47
Speaker
Death is a kind of like commonplace.
00:06:49
Speaker
So open social recognition.
00:06:51
Speaker
With my own father, I remember we were in the room, my aunt was there and she said, oh, come quick, he's dying, he's dying.
00:06:59
Speaker
And I went into this room, tiny wee room, and there were 10 mainly women in it.
00:07:04
Speaker
Some of them strangers, some of the people I'd never met before.
00:07:06
Speaker
I'm thinking, what the hell are you here for?
00:07:09
Speaker
And anyway, they broke out in the rosary.
00:07:11
Speaker
You know, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
00:07:13
Speaker
Bless thou thou, and bless the fruit of thy one.
00:07:14
Speaker
And Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for sinners now.
00:07:16
Speaker
And the noise, the chorus grew louder and louder and louder.
00:07:20
Speaker
And they thought he was actually dying at that moment.
00:07:23
Speaker
And what I recognised then, I suppose I recognised it as a writer and a responsibility, they were like cradling this man into death.
00:07:30
Speaker
It was like a kind of lullaby, like you'd, the way that you might hold a child and you'd sing a song.
00:07:35
Speaker
So they were kind of holding this other human being who was doing that incredibly ordinary thing of dying.
00:07:42
Speaker
And it was an act of profound love and empathy.
00:07:46
Speaker
Because, of course, the first best hope of life is that you will be born into a family and people who will love you.
00:07:53
Speaker
And the last best hope of life is that you will die within a community who will love you too, who will love you to death, literally.
00:08:01
Speaker
But then, obviously, do the right thing by you, you know, respect your body, give you a kind of proper funeral, lay you to rest.
00:08:08
Speaker
And one of the reasons for that is...
00:08:10
Speaker
These are really, really old human beliefs.
00:08:14
Speaker
These are far before any organized religion.
00:08:17
Speaker
We feel we've got a kind of duty to the dead to lay them to rest, partly because our ancestors were a bit scared that if you didn't do that, they'd come out of the grave, out of the spirit world, and they'd come and haunt you forever.
00:08:28
Speaker
So we have to do the right things by the dead, regardless of how tragic it is, and lay them to rest.
00:08:35
Speaker
And that's one of the things why I think we find murder so abhorrent, or mass grave.
00:08:40
Speaker
Because obviously murderers always hide their victims.
00:08:43
Speaker
They bury them without a Christian burial and unmarked graves.
00:08:47
Speaker
They lie and cover up atrocities and war.
00:08:50
Speaker
And we're kind of disrespecting the humanity of others.
00:08:54
Speaker
So these are really profound psychological beliefs that underpin all human society and the Irish are just really growing at.
The Irish and Death Superstitions
00:09:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting because one of the things that I'm famous or not famous or whatever for, but I've said often is I think the Irish are, I actually don't think we're good at death.
00:09:14
Speaker
I think we're good at funeral.
00:09:16
Speaker
So, because in my experience,
00:09:18
Speaker
We are such a superstitious country.
00:09:21
Speaker
So like if you said to somebody, like I've often said to my mum, oh, mum, that necklace is lovely or those earrings are gorgeous.
00:09:29
Speaker
And she'd start to say, oh, well, you can have them, you know, when I, you know, you're an embers on them.
00:09:34
Speaker
You know, I'd immediately or my reaction should immediately be, oh, don't don't even talk about it.
00:09:39
Speaker
So it's we're good at it in certain respects, I feel.
00:09:43
Speaker
But in other respects, we're so superstitious, kind of touching on what you said about how if it's done disrespectfully, then there's a chance that the Banshees could have come back and get us.
00:09:56
Speaker
And you touched a bit there as well on the women involved.
00:10:00
Speaker
You know, and that's obviously a famous like the Keening Woman, the band Queen to, you know, coming in and the prayer, even though it's the prayer, you know, which is obviously specific to certain people.
00:10:10
Speaker
There is it's more of the melody and the lullaby.
00:10:13
Speaker
And yeah, it's.
00:10:15
Speaker
It's fascinating.
00:10:16
Speaker
There was an ad years ago.
00:10:17
Speaker
It just reminded me there.
00:10:19
Speaker
I think it was PlayStation or something.
00:10:20
Speaker
And it was an absolutely brilliant ad.
00:10:22
Speaker
I must dig it up somewhere.
00:10:23
Speaker
Where it basically showed us kind of scuttling through life and how we're born.
00:10:29
Speaker
And it kind of took us off as a rocket, like a human rocket.
00:10:32
Speaker
And how it brought us then back to how it's full circle.
00:10:37
Speaker
You know, we come, I've often said it, we kind of are born into this world naked with no shame, no guilt, you know, nothing.
00:10:43
Speaker
And then we go back.
00:10:45
Speaker
basically naked.
00:10:46
Speaker
I mean, you can put clothes on us, but it's not going to do much good.
00:10:49
Speaker
It's just, yeah, it's such a fascinating idea.
00:10:52
Speaker
And I do think the Irish are incredible.
00:10:55
Speaker
We did an interview with, I'm not sure if you know of him, Frank Crummey, the legendary Frank Crummey, who is
00:11:01
Speaker
Getting on, I saw Moni just last month, thankfully, for his 86th birthday.
00:11:06
Speaker
He's an incredible man and legend in Ireland.
00:11:08
Speaker
But I remember him talking about the Irish wakes and how his kids, you know, you'd get a bag of chips and the good china might come out as well when somebody died and the good food would come out.
00:11:20
Speaker
And, you know, if you dropped it in on top of the corpse, you went in and got it.
00:11:25
Speaker
There was just a familiarity with the corpse, which I think is really beautiful.
00:11:29
Speaker
And which is sad to see that that's gone.
00:11:32
Speaker
I do think I think being forced to see dead bodies isn't not isn't great either.
00:11:38
Speaker
I do think so.
00:11:39
Speaker
I'm definitely I hear I absolutely hear everything you're saying and I think it should be more normalized.
00:11:45
Speaker
I think children.
00:11:46
Speaker
It should be a thing.
00:11:47
Speaker
And, you know, just recently my niece and nephew lost their great grandmother.
00:11:51
Speaker
And, you know, then all of a sudden they were terrified that other people were going to go as well.
00:11:56
Speaker
But I do think you have to start introducing that early to children for them to start getting understanding and not be scared and not in a scary situation.
00:12:04
Speaker
And I know the former president of the NAFD in the UK, John, he's doing a brilliant job of trying to bring bereavement to schools where it should be taught like sex education and all.
00:12:16
Speaker
Like fundamentals.
00:12:17
Speaker
Most likely is everybody going to have sex in their life and is everybody going to die?
00:12:21
Speaker
Those are the two.
00:12:22
Speaker
Never mind the taxes, actually, because I don't think everybody pays taxes, let's be honest.
00:12:26
Speaker
So that's nearly outdated.
00:12:28
Speaker
But what I do find interesting is that I do think there should be a choice.
00:12:33
Speaker
You know, I sound very millennial, I guess, when I'm saying this, but...
00:12:36
Speaker
For example, for me, I've seen obviously hundreds of dead bodies.
00:12:41
Speaker
I do this for a living.
00:12:42
Speaker
But when it comes to my own people, my own and I've no problem seeing them.
00:12:46
Speaker
But when it comes to my own people, I do have preferences.
00:12:50
Speaker
Like, unfortunately, one of my friends passed away and unfortunately he drowned.
00:12:56
Speaker
and seeing him unfortunately I wish I could reverse time it was exactly as you said it was a very Irish thing I was just brought into the room because that was the natural thing you did and I just wish I could have had that choice and and unfortunately then I was there and you know you can't take it away but now that's the face that I see instead of his lovely and when somebody drowns it's
00:13:18
Speaker
It's tough on the body and depending on how the person has passed away and the quality of embalming, it can definitely make the body look.
00:13:29
Speaker
And equally here in America, I've obviously done some Irish funerals and then I've attended some funerals that I've had nothing to do with.
00:13:36
Speaker
And there is, which isn't a part of old Ireland, but embalming is a huge new thing, right?
00:13:44
Speaker
New commercialization of death.
00:13:45
Speaker
And I do feel like embalming and I love Glyn Tallon, who's an incredible embalmer in Ireland.
00:13:51
Speaker
His work is brilliant.
00:13:52
Speaker
But there's some people who are not so great at it.
00:13:55
Speaker
And you see these young, beautiful girls who died by suicide or, you know, just died tragically young.
00:14:02
Speaker
And they're done up like a 90-year-old woman.
00:14:04
Speaker
And you're like, what?
00:14:05
Speaker
This wasn't, this isn't my friend.
00:14:07
Speaker
So I do understand the need to hang on to the memories of the person laughing.
00:14:14
Speaker
But at the same time, there needs to be this comfortability with death.
00:14:19
Speaker
So it's a tough one, Kevin.
00:14:21
Speaker
You either adopt something like a kind of closed English system.
00:14:25
Speaker
Like I remember Zanty Marge in England.
00:14:28
Speaker
She died.
00:14:29
Speaker
There was this funeral that took place eight weeks later.
00:14:33
Speaker
I wouldn't even call it a funeral, I'd call it like a memorial service.
00:14:37
Speaker
You know, they arrived in the big Mercedes, West London crematorium, wheeled the rent in a box.
00:14:45
Speaker
You know, the Church of England for hire our vicar, who of course had never met her and told us that, but then told us she was very nice.
00:14:53
Speaker
And then we had an English week in the golf club afterwards.
00:14:58
Speaker
And she was like a kind of big person.
00:15:00
Speaker
She'd been a human resource officer in what became the University of London.
00:15:04
Speaker
If I was in Dublin, there would have been like 800 people that were human.
00:15:08
Speaker
There was like 30.
00:15:08
Speaker
They were all old.
00:15:10
Speaker
Everyone had been drawing their pension for about like a decade.
00:15:13
Speaker
She was 82.
00:15:14
Speaker
And it was a really small little squimp to the end of her life.
00:15:18
Speaker
I'm not sure how therapeutic it was.
00:15:21
Speaker
She was actually in a kind of racially mixed marriage, and that wasn't referred to at all.
00:15:27
Speaker
It's just like who, you know, she was, you know, kind of product in the machine.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:32
Speaker
And obviously there's no viewing of the body.
00:15:34
Speaker
And particularly in England, I'd be quite critical and other undertakers would be critical too.
00:15:39
Speaker
You know, it's actually very difficult to get buried very quickly.
00:15:42
Speaker
I mean, by quickly, I mean four to six weeks.
00:15:45
Speaker
And that is tricky, you know.
00:15:47
Speaker
I think it's tricky for a lot of people in terms of their grief.
00:15:49
Speaker
It's tricky in terms of family gathering.
00:15:52
Speaker
It's tricky in terms of obviously seeing the dead body, if you want to see the dead body.
00:15:57
Speaker
I mean, you can, but it's amazing that in Dublin, you can still get buried in three days.
00:16:01
Speaker
And I think you'd struggle in the UK to get buried within three weeks anywhere or cremated.
00:16:07
Speaker
You'd be doing really, really well.
00:16:09
Speaker
So Dublin is the city of million people and the Vikings were there and, you know,
00:16:15
Speaker
The Romans never got there, but it's a pretty old city.
00:16:17
Speaker
It's not like... It didn't just arrive yesterday.
00:16:20
Speaker
It's been burying a lot of people in Dublin for a long time.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah, and the two main families that do the funerals there are even more in competition than ever.
00:16:29
Speaker
I think the two of them have opened up two new facilities in the same neighbourhood.
00:16:33
Speaker
So whenever I go home, I laugh.
00:16:36
Speaker
I'm like, oh, the funeral wars, family wars are still going on.
00:16:40
Speaker
Yeah, so... Yeah, listen, it's so... The week...
00:16:44
Speaker
the Irish wake is so interesting and it's got so much validity to even, you know, applying it to today.
00:16:51
Speaker
And I think, well, for me, obviously, because it's what I do for a living, but for me, I think it's bringing back or it's modernizing the aspects that I really think are important.
Modernizing Irish Wakes
00:17:03
Speaker
And when I'm working with a family, it's,
00:17:06
Speaker
You know, food and drink, it sounds, it almost sounds like commercializing it again.
00:17:09
Speaker
And yes, you know, you're getting caterers, you're doing all this biz.
00:17:12
Speaker
But at the same time, it's like having the service and it being a personalized service, even if the person is Catholic or Jewish or whoever they are, but having it really, truly personalized service.
00:17:23
Speaker
And then just allowing people over food and drink to share memories rather than it's just, boop, it's over and let's move on and now back to reality.
00:17:32
Speaker
And even I'm a celebrant now, which my grandmother probably be rolling in her grave because I was raised Catholic, as most Irish people were.
00:17:39
Speaker
And but now I'm a celebrant.
00:17:40
Speaker
And so I help people of all different faiths.
00:17:43
Speaker
And it doesn't take away from my Catholic faith.
00:17:47
Speaker
It's just that I help people personalize the service.
00:17:50
Speaker
And exactly like what you said about the priest, which is a big thing.
00:17:54
Speaker
issue people have is that the priest will either doesn't know the person but acts like they do or to get the name wrong or if I've heard you know that I've heard it a million times and so for me it's so important to make sure I get everybody's names right as to who's who and equally I'm very the family will approve every word I say before I get up there and say it there's no ad-libbing because it's such a dangerous time to ad-lib I think because I could think oh I've spent the last two days with this family I know what their humour is but
00:18:24
Speaker
I'm going to crack this joke now.
00:18:25
Speaker
And it could fall absolutely flat.
00:18:27
Speaker
Like this isn't a comedy show.
00:18:29
Speaker
You know, it's this person's it's it's about them.
00:18:33
Speaker
But tell us, Kevin, because we could talk all day.
00:18:37
Speaker
You just recently did, which I'm shocked that I found out after the fact I would have absolutely gone home for
Reviving the Art of Keening
00:18:43
Speaker
it.
00:18:43
Speaker
And you just did a Keening Festival in Ireland.
00:18:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, one of the lost arts of the wake is Keening.
00:18:50
Speaker
And again, it's a hugely old rite.
00:18:54
Speaker
It's like the oldest music of womankind.
00:18:57
Speaker
The ancient Egyptians did it.
00:18:59
Speaker
The Trojans did it.
00:19:01
Speaker
If you read the Iliad, which is written by Homer in 750 BC, when they eventually take the Trojan prince Hector's body back to Troy, and it's like the end game, quite soon the city's going to fall.
00:19:13
Speaker
All the Trojan women rush out into the street and they keen and then eventually they sort of take them home and they kind of wash them up.
00:19:20
Speaker
And Homer says, and then we have the minstrels of the dirge.
00:19:25
Speaker
And are these keening women?
00:19:26
Speaker
So you've had that.
00:19:27
Speaker
In Roman London as well, you would have keening women.
00:19:30
Speaker
In Ghana today, you can still hire keeners.
00:19:33
Speaker
And I would love to reintroduce, you know, hire professional keeners.
00:19:37
Speaker
And we might think, oh, God, that sounds so fake and insincere.
00:19:40
Speaker
But it's no more insincere than, in a sense, you know, hiring the funeral, the hearse driver.
00:19:44
Speaker
You hire people, you know, you hire undertakers.
00:19:47
Speaker
Paul Bearers, Grave Towers.
00:19:48
Speaker
Keening brings on a kind of catharsis of emotion.
00:19:52
Speaker
People often used it to sort of elevate the status of the deceased, show how sad everyone was, how important they were.
00:19:59
Speaker
But also it is a way of sort of bringing on emotion.
00:20:03
Speaker
Our ancestors did it for a really good reason, is that you get this intense burst of emotion, but you kind of move through the grieving process quite quickly.
00:20:12
Speaker
And really that's also part of the Irish wake, which is so therapeutic, is people come together and they kind of shake your hand.
00:20:19
Speaker
You know, sometimes if you're one of the principal mourners, you'll shake 400 people's hands.
00:20:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:25
Speaker
But all the time they're saying, it's a cliche, sorry for your trouble.
00:20:28
Speaker
They're also kind of squeezing your hand a little bit.
00:20:30
Speaker
And then they're psychologically saying, they're dead.
00:20:33
Speaker
I know they're dead.
00:20:34
Speaker
Do you know they're dead?
00:20:36
Speaker
They're dead.
00:20:36
Speaker
They're dead.
00:20:37
Speaker
And of course, John Didion does this at the Year of Magical Thinking where the husband dies and she has to keep the shoes in the bottom of the bedroom because in case he comes back, it's quite easy to sort of think that behind after the funeral, that your life will resume.
00:20:52
Speaker
So wakes, keening, all of these arts really are to bring you through that death process, the realization of kind of therapeutic.
00:21:02
Speaker
So we had this keening festival to kind of celebrate it all.
00:21:06
Speaker
We had walks and talks.
00:21:08
Speaker
And there's a lot about, there's another side to the wake.
00:21:11
Speaker
This comes out in Bardic Poetry.
00:21:13
Speaker
where we all gathered together around the dead body to bring it through this solar cycle.
00:21:19
Speaker
But one of the deep, deep beliefs was that it was a kind of dodgy place, that once you have opened this doorway for the soul to depart into the underworld, you're pretty fearful about what was coming back through that doorway.
00:21:31
Speaker
And that is what people do, is when you wake through the night, you're there to basically man the gate of chaos against Hades' invading Horde.
00:21:42
Speaker
until the glorious life-giving sun rises in victory again.
00:21:47
Speaker
Immortal soldiers stalwart, forever gathering themselves, dying in each other's lives and living on in each other's death at every wake ever since.
00:21:58
Speaker
That's from a Bardic poem I've written called If I Could Sing, but basically that's what all those old men sipping bottles of Guinness at three o'clock in the morning on a hard seat are doing in some small Irish island.
00:22:10
Speaker
They're guarding the natural world against the invasion of spirits.
00:22:15
Speaker
They're our last mortal defence.
00:22:18
Speaker
And of course it's all the idea that the supernatural and the natural are all kind of mingled up together and that you have to lay this person to rest so that these horrible supernatural forces don't kind of burst in
00:22:31
Speaker
When you think about it, it's a really common grief reaction for the bereaved to see they're dead for three months, six months.
00:22:40
Speaker
Really, they come in their dreams.
00:22:41
Speaker
And of course, if you were in, you know, in the past, you said, well, that's them.
00:22:45
Speaker
That's their spirit like appearing.
00:22:47
Speaker
And, you know, there's often it's this happens in the Odyssey.
00:22:50
Speaker
You say, well, you haven't really buried me.
00:22:52
Speaker
You know, you better come back and give me, you know, put me to rest.
00:22:55
Speaker
You promised.
00:22:56
Speaker
And so it's this idea that this vision, this dream that you have is this work, you know,
00:23:02
Speaker
Voices from the other world.
00:23:03
Speaker
So we're all gathered there.
00:23:05
Speaker
We've got our shoulders to the door making sure that Hades invading Horsach are bursting through.
00:23:11
Speaker
And hopefully that Auntie Maudie is soon on her way safely.
00:23:16
Speaker
There's also tradition in Akil Island to what they call the shtickers.
00:23:21
Speaker
And the guys who actually spend all night sitting up, they in the morning, they get a decent Irish fry, bacon and sausages before being sent on their way.
00:23:32
Speaker
That sounds about right.
00:23:33
Speaker
All right.
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's so funny how so much in Ireland revolves around food and drink as a motivator or as a keep the peace.
00:23:43
Speaker
So the festival, was it a success?
00:23:45
Speaker
Will it happen again, do you think?
Cultural Impact of the Keening Festival
00:23:47
Speaker
It'll happen next year.
00:23:49
Speaker
Yeah, it was a tremendous success.
00:23:50
Speaker
We had amazing sort of publicity.
00:23:53
Speaker
We had lots of people come from the UK, some from Germany.
00:23:57
Speaker
What it was is people kind of recognised that the Irish Wake, Keening, that these are really almost like the centre and core of Irish culture and that it was the right thing to kind of honour them.
00:24:10
Speaker
And it was surprising, really, that it hadn't been done before.
00:24:12
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:24:13
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:24:15
Speaker
And also we're very keen on, as I say, reviving Keening.
00:24:19
Speaker
There was a great Shanos singer there called Katrina Nohanawine whose own grandmother taught her Keening in the 1960s in Konamara.
00:24:29
Speaker
My own great-grandmother was a Keener in Echel.
00:24:31
Speaker
And even with Sonny's death, that we didn't do kind of formal Keenan, but we did something really, really similar to Keenan.
00:24:39
Speaker
When one of my aunts would come, forced come to see her brother, who was my father, this interesting about Wakes is that you begin to realise is that the man I knew is my father.
00:24:49
Speaker
Other people used their brother or their workmate or their colleague.
00:24:53
Speaker
They all did these different aspects.
00:24:55
Speaker
But anyway, when my aunts would turn up to look at their dead brother, there was this whole wave of kind of keenan that went through the room with all the women and went through me too.
00:25:04
Speaker
And there was a wave of kind of catharsis of emotion that was bringing out this grief.
00:25:10
Speaker
And that was a good thing.
00:25:11
Speaker
There was no shame in that story.
00:25:12
Speaker
And if you can't cry when someone that you've loved has died, then...
00:25:17
Speaker
when else yeah absolutely absolutely yeah no it's very very interesting and when is the festival when will it be next year it's uh in may of next year may it'll be may the 17th to the 18th it's in mulrani beautiful part of the world
00:25:34
Speaker
We don't want to sort of turn it into some sort of academic, you know, here we are and such and such.
00:25:38
Speaker
It's a participatory.
00:25:41
Speaker
One of the most amazing aspects of the festival was a kind of sharing.
00:25:46
Speaker
For instance, there was a palliative care nurse there.
00:25:49
Speaker
And she was talking about her feeling slightly embarrassed when one of the patients was dying at home and she was in and they wanted to sing.
00:25:56
Speaker
They wanted to sing.
00:25:58
Speaker
And so they all began to sing.
00:26:01
Speaker
And then she began in the kind of, we're in this chapel.
00:26:06
Speaker
And then we said, well, what was the song?
00:26:07
Speaker
And so she began to sing the song and everyone else sang the song too.
00:26:11
Speaker
And it was very moving.
00:26:13
Speaker
It's important.
00:26:14
Speaker
The festival's not a kind of lecture of experts.
00:26:17
Speaker
It's there to gather in, to share, to, in some ways, to revive these lost arts of the week.
00:26:26
Speaker
So that little bit of poetry is from a bardic poem that I've
00:26:32
Speaker
I've written about the island called If I Could Sing.
00:26:34
Speaker
I've given another little verse.
00:26:37
Speaker
If you could hear my soul, you too would listen in rapture to the Amra Kintia, keening women, crying out, heart struck still for Hector and his children, sundered in the same grieving that the living and the dead must conmingle in the sickening, the dying and the grave.