School: Cnoc na Groighe (B.), Ráth Mhór

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1. Death (continued)

   

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   funeral was to travel. Few of the men and women with whom I discussed wake customs ever heard of such a procedure but many of them noticed that the corpse was often turned differently to the person's usual way of sleeping. (Mrs Denis Sheehan heard THAT, "ever and always", during the last forty years and her mother who died in 1916 at the age of seventy always said it)
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   One often heard after a funeral that the deceased "would be drawing the water". The statement is made when the deceased was the last to be interred in the graveyard that day. The common belief was that the last person buried on any day would be required to draw water to the suffering souls in Purgatory and that his duties ceased only when the next burial took place in that graveyard. The new "soul" then took up the duty. Hence, when two funerals were to take place to the same burying ground on the one day the deceaseds' relatives were always anxious to get their first. The friends, when the first burial had taken place, would say, "Well, he wasn't long drawing the water" meaning, that when the second funeral did come and when the burial took place this second person (or spirit) had the wearisome duty imposed on him.

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Topics

   1. activities
      1. social activities (~7)
         1. rites of passage (~573)
            1. death (~1,076)

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Díarmuid Ó Múimhneacháin

   Gender

   Male

   Occupation

   Príomhoide