An Irishman's Diary

IF EVER there can be a happy funeral, it must be something like the one I attended last weekend in the north Monaghan village of Threemilehouse. The dead woman, Brigid McQuaid, had passed away peacefully aged 92. She was surrounded at the end by devoted children and grandchildren, some of whom had returned from Australia when the call went out. And among the many tributes paid to her was a fine old tradition whereby friends and neighbours dug the grave.

There were more than a dozen men involved in this task: Protestant as well as Catholic. The serious digging was left to the younger ones. But even bystanders contributed, in the form of conversation or other gifts deemed necessary to the occasion. I believe there were bottles of whiskey involved.

The deceased had been a famous dressmaker, who once drew customers from several counties on either side of the border. The concept of coat-turning survives now only as a metaphor for disloyalty. But it was economic necessity once; and in poorer times, Brigid’s skill in turning coats, thereby making new coats, was much sought-after.

Her former customers, or at least their descendants, swelled the large attendance at the funeral mass. A heavy shower fell on the church during the service, by way of a blessing. Then the sun came out in time for the burial in a hill-top cemetery, where there was much conversation and laughter. I attended the Monaghan-Armagh football match in Clones later that day; and if either event could be described as grim, it definitely wasn’t the funeral.

Communal grave-digging is a disappearing tradition, sadly. It is going the way of other funerary customs, like the one referred to in John McGahern's book That They May Face the Rising Sun: namely the arrangement of graves – indeed whole cemeteries – to point east, the expected path of the resurrection. (Not that Christians though of this first; the architects of Newgrange had a broadly similar idea.)

For good or bad, probably both, the famous Irish wake is not what it once was either. In his 2006 travelogue-cum-memoir, Booking Passage, Irish-American Thomas Lynch wrote movingly about the phenomenon with the combined sensibilities of a poet and an undertaker (based in Detroit). In his professional capacity, he performed funerals for all faiths and none; but he thought his Irish ancestors had elevated death to an art form. "Communal theatre" he called it.

Not all old Irish funeral customs were so healthy. One of them may or may not have inspired a famous sketch on Dave Allen’s 1970s TV show, featuring a race between two funeral processions. Either way, there was a belief once widespread in Ireland and Scotland that the latest arrival in a graveyard was obliged to perform onerous duties for the other spirits.

When two funerals coincided, therefore, both sets of relatives would vie to spare their deceased loved ones such work, and troubled often ensued. The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Irelandmentions a case in Cork in 1897, where one party locked the cemetery gates beforehand to thwart the other, only for the rivals to "throw" their coffin over the wall and celebrate victory with a "wild cheer".

It wasn’t always as restrained as that. A similar case in Dublin in 1835, reported by the London Times, “led to a full-scale riot the deaths of two mourners and the serious injury of many more”. The last recorded mention of the custom here was 1923, so by now it can be presumed both late and unlamented, or so one hopes.

From Threemilehouse on Saturday, I finally made the short pilgrimage to another cemetery: the Church of Ireland one at St Molua’s, Drumsnat, barely two miles away. This is one of the oldest Christian sites in Ireland, dating from 500 AD. But I went there mainly to see the graves of Mary and Emily Wilde, half-sisters of Oscar, who died locally in tragic circumstances

Their headstone was barely legible until we wiped the surface with wet grass. Then the names and ages – 22 and 24 – stood out along with the epitaph, which includes the line: “They were lovely in life and in death they were not separated.”

This is poetic euphemism. The sisters were “love-children” of Sir William Wilde, raised in Monaghan by his clergyman brother Ralph, away from the eyes of Dublin society.

They were attending a Halloween Ball in a private house in 1871 when Emily’s muslin dress caught fire. Whereupon Mary ran to help, and her dress caught too. Both died from their burns.

If Irish Catholics made an art form of wakes, Protestants did so with cemeteries.

It probably helps that they tend not to be densely populated, although the judicious planting of trees is a big part of it too. But especially in rural Ireland, Protestant graveyards are invariably picturesque and profoundly peaceful places.

St Molua’s is no exception.

Under a yew tree nearby, I noticed what at first looked like a marble bust, sculpted in the Greek style. Then it moved. And on closer inspection it turned out to be a sheep: one of a small flock of ewes that (safely) graze in the old part of the cemetery, where all that was missing was a Bach soundtrack.