School: Glascorn (roll number 16615)
- Location:
- Glascarn, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: Mrs Hope
Open data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Glascorn
- XML Page 223
- XML “Death and Funeral Customs”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- When there is a death in a house the relatives of the dead person send word to the sacrastin who immediately rings the dead bell. This is done to let the people know that a parishioner has just died so that they will say a prayer for the dead person. When a person dies in a house the clock is stopped and it is not put on again till after the burial. This is an old custom. The friends of the dead person never wash or lay out the corpse. The neighbours do this work. The wake is usually carried on during the night. All the neighbours attend the wake. The people of the house supply clay pipes and tobacco and sometimes snuff. They talk and chat with each other to pass away the time. Long ago they used to play games and sing at wakes but this is done away with now.
If the person dies before twelve o'clock at night the corpse is brought to the chapel the following evening(continues on next page)- Collector
- Philomena Whelan
- Gender
- Female