“But the dead must go on, and silently the old Lament brings him as
far as the gorge, where it shines in moonlight: the source of joy.
Naming it reverently, she says: ‘It is an enduring stream among men.’
They stand at the foot of the mountains. And there she embraces
him, weeping.”
from the Duino Elegies (X)
Rainer Maria Rilke
THE SOURCE OF LAMENT IN THE FUNERARY CUSTOMS OF THE
CELTIC LANDS
Gary Plouff
1996
INTRODUCTION
All humans will die. This recognition is a central cornerstone of human culture. Images of death and
the ‘afterlife’ abound in ancient mythology and occur in all cultures, each having created their own
mortuary practices and music specific to death. This paper will explore the funerary customs and
music of the Celtic Lands: Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. I will look at the role of the midwife (bean-
ghluin) as mourning-woman (bean-tuiridh), the use of lament, keening, death croon, dirge, and the role
they play in assisting the living and the dead to adjust to a new world absent of ones once loved and
cherished. I will also enter into a dialogue as to the role of the music thanatologist in the use of
lament to aid in this transition.
I. A BRIEF HISTORY
One of the primary ways of defining a culture is through archaeological findings identifying the
burial customs of that culture. I will look at the music of the Celtic traditions associated with
funerals. In Ireland and Scotland this type of music survived until recent times. Thecaoine (‘keen’) is
that form: the lament, the sad song, theGoltriaghe (a separate category distinct from theGeantraighe
[laughter], and theSuantraighe [slumber] songs).
The word Caoine has its ancient roots in the word ‘Cine’, which is almost equal in letters and
pronunciation to the Hebrew word ‘Cina’ which means lamentation, or crying, with clapping of
hands – lamentatio, planctus. In Welsh, ‘Kuyn’ is a complaint. In the Archaelogia Britannica, the
Copyright © 1996 Gary Plouff All Rights Reserved

2
word Caoine is referred to as a ‘sort of verse used in elegies or funeral poems, and sometimes also in
panegyricks and satyrs.’ The Irish Dictionary describes the Caoine as ‘the Irish lamentation for the
dead, according to certain loud and mournful notes and verses.’
The lament is perhaps the oldest Irish vocal music to have survived.
1
There are many descriptions of
what the lament sounded like, but there is little of the actual music to be found. The earliest
reference to the caoine is found in the seventh century eulogy for St. Cummain the Tall.
2
The church
in Ireland and Scotland tried to suppress this form of song, succeeding only in this century. The
lamentation was possibly ‘too much for a religion which preached paradise, though the Celts had
their other world and it too seems to have been a happy one.’
3
The caoine is, most assuredly, a
sorrowful expression of loss, the sincere expression of a grief genuinely felt. It was a way of singing
of the virtues and mourning the losses of the deceased one. The lament was often sung by the
professional mourning woman (bean-tuiream) and was considered part of the funerary ritual that was
the right of all, regardless of one’s station in life, ensuring them of a safe passage to the next world, a
‘bas sona’ or ‘happy death’.
4
The use of the lament can be considered here in the work of the music
thanatologist who uses music to aid in facilitating the ‘blessed’ or conscious death and who, through
the agent of the music, may allow for the safe passage to the other world. The role of the
psychopomp in vernacular culture and that of the ‘sacramental midwife’ in our own, can be directly
linked to the work of the mourning woman. In the Celtic Highland community, the role of midwife
and mourning woman were of equal importance and many townships had both attesting to the
connection between life and death and the intimate link between the passage into and out of the
body. The work of Therese Schroeder-Sheker in our own century is a dynamic extension of the role
of the mourning woman and the importance of music at the deathbed. She calls her work ‘musical-
sacramental midwifery’ in which the dying are ‘anointed’ with sound to aid in the ‘unbinding’
process necessary to help the dying one ‘let go’ and die in peace, with dignity, and honor.
THE MOURNING SONG
In Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, he makes a distinction between two types of mourning songs.
There is the song sung in the house, the ‘seisig-bhais’ (death tune); the other is sung during the

3
procession of the coffin to the burial ground, the ‘ tuiream’ . ‘Keening’ is the popular name for the
mourning song sung in the house.
5
According to Carmichael, the tuiream was sung by a local bean-tuirim, whose performance would be
quite dramatic. He says, ‘the bean-tuirim followed the body, every now and then striking the coffin
with her hands like a drum and making all the din possible, and keeping time with the movement of
the men. All the virtues of the dead were mentioned and extolled, and the genealogy for many
generations praised and lauded.’ The clapping of the hands seems to be characteristic of Gaelic
mourning
6
and to beat the time of the lament on the coffin lid was a practice that was a normal part
of keening.
One possible source for the music of the caoine is in the sound of the bird. Birds can be considered
the first musicians and ancient peoples perhaps imitated their sound with the voice or with a pipe of
bone. In Scotland, this connection between bird-song and music can be traced back to the early
Picts who are said to have brought to Ireland ‘every spell, charm, sneeze and augury by the voices of
birds, and every omen.’
7
Associations can be drawn between bird imitation and the oldest surviving
music.
Calum Johnson, a traditional Gaelic singer, has recorded a mourning song which sounds somewhat
like a bird and may have been derived from pre-Christian laments with their source in bird-song.
This is the sound ‘pi-li-li-liu’. There are Celtic peoples who called one of the seabirds the
caoineteach’ or bird of lament. Its cry is said to have anticipated a death and represented the cry of
the women keeners. There is a seabird, the redshank, which inhabits the shoreline of the Celtic Isles
whose cry is very close to the sound ‘pi-li-li-liu’. The consonants and vowels match the birds’ cry at
the edge of the sea, the place where the land meets the ocean representing eternal life.

4
Calum Johnson was a piper and he is said to have commented upon the recording of this Caoine by
saying he was trying to imitate bagpipes. There is an interesting circular movement as the bird
sounds are imitated by the human voice and the bagpipes take over, and finally, the human voice
then imitates the bagpipes and in the process, the bird sounds. In Scotland as well as Ireland, the
syllables ‘pi-li-li-liu’ were used for the lament. The tune works very well on the bagpipe especially if it
is begun on the high G, which to the present day is still called the note of sorrow by pipers (Purser
1992).
II. STRUCTURE AND PERFORMANCE STYLE
The caoine was in three parts: a repetition of the name of the dead, this was traditionally sung in a
deep, murmuring tone; a dirge (Gaelic –tuiream) in which the dead person’s virtues were evoked and
the attributes of their character extolled; the third part was the cry (gol ) which used vocables

5
(untranslatable vowel sounds) perhaps utilized to make contact with the unseen world. This third
part links music with magic as a secret language is employed to communicate with the other world
through hypnotic repetition.
The caoine did not have a fixed melody, but the gol is very similar over a range of sources. It usually
starts high and gradually descends down through the scale. This descending phrase is a natural one
to select for sorrow and expresses the intensity of feeling involved. This descending phrase is found
in the laments of Eastern Europe also.
8
The form of the phrase is directly informed by crying. At the
end of each chorus, there is a lift back up through the use of an octave leap.
The Goltree, this music of sorrow, is strange and unearthly. In his book, The Song Lore of Ireland,
Redfern Mason describes the scene at the deathbed. ‘When the last confession has been said and
death is momentarily expected, all the family kneel around the dying person. Holy water is sprinkled
about the room and all join in reciting the litany for the dying. When death comes, all rise and join in
the death chant, and everyone who hears it says a prayer for the soul which is gone. The chant
closely follows the natural accent of grief, and they are sung again and again at intervals.’ (Mason,
1911)
Many villages had professional keeners, dressed in somber clothes they would rock back and forth
near the dead, singing the death dirge and the gol. Between the keeners’ cries, members of the family
would break into lamentation, addressing the corpse, calling out to remember the happier days when
the loved one was amongst the living. These outbursts of grief could be very eloquent as this one
attests.
O women, look on me, women; look on me, women; look on me in my sorrow.
Have you seen any sorrow like mine? Have you ever seen the like of me in my
sorrow? Arrah! then, my darling, it is your mother that calls you. How long you are
sleeping. Do you see all the people round you, my darling, and I sorely weeping?
Arrah! what is this paleness on your sweet face? Sure, there was no equal to it in Erin
for beauty and fairness. Your hair was heavy as the wing of a raven, and your hand
was whiter than the hand of a lady. Is it a stranger that must carry me to my grave
and my son lying here? (Mason, 1911)
Below is an example of the gol. The fermata is used over certain notes which allows the singer to
sustain the tone beyond the note value, according to the power or inclination of the singer. This is
free recitative rather than symmetrical meter. It is similar to the plain chant of the Roman Church,

6
melody without regular meter. It is rhythm occurring through the words rather than through the use
of a time signature. This unrestrained mourning transcends ordinary rules and is filled with the spirit
of a grief-filled heart.
There is only one other song genre which has a similar structure, this is the ploughman’s song.
Perhaps the importance of ploughing and the correlation between digging in the dirt and burying
someone brought the two forms together: dust to dust; religion and work sharing the song as the
plough digs a grave for the seed and the keen (tuiream) accompanies the body to the grave.
The cry was almost exclusively sung by women of a mature age who were often times not well
accepted in the villages because they communicated with the dead, although they were accepted in
death contexts since they were needed. In Greece, women gain power through lamenting and
widows would have ‘no social life unless they were allowed to lament.’
9
There seems to be no culture
in which only men sing laments, but there are cases where both the men and women sing. In
shamanic cultures, the men must travel to the land of the dead when curing someone, thereby taking
care of the living; women take care of the dead. There is a natural order there as women are closer to
the cycle of birth and death than are men, and since laments are usually performed in a crying
manner more natural to female than to male, although this may be culturally determined.
The professional mourner uses ritualized expressions of grief, symbols of emotion rather than
personal grief. The use of crying allows them to enter into the other world to guide the spirit. Crying
is used to enter into the trance-state. The vocables are employed like a secret language that is not a
part of the ordinary world. The dead understand this language since they need to in order to journey
to the world beyond death.

7
In Zambia, it is an honor to lead the lament. Death is seen as a form of birth, the birth of the spirit.
Men do not sing the dirge because they do not give birth. The women sing it to bring life. They have
a saying that the dead only hear music. When they call the spirit, it must be done through music as it
is the purest form of communication ‘through which we can either call the spirit back to work with
us, or through which we can send a human that has been cleaned and purified through death, into
the pure form of the spirit … you can never tell a lie through music because music in itself, is
pure.’
10
MUSIC THANATOLOGY: WHAT IS OUR SONG?
As the shaman sings, so does the Chalice worker, and the mourning woman. What should be our
song, then? When we sing, do we call the angels down to aid us here on earth? And if so, what is the
musical language that they will respond to? The use of sacral language may be a key. A language used
for ritual, worship, incantation, chant. A language that lies deep in the subconscious, that awakens
the center of devotional power, that keys in with an energy that is ancient and connects with origin.
There are many sources in which to access this energy. One can find it in reciting the sacred names
of God, or in an old Celtic lullaby, or a lament. As music thanatologists, we have mainly used the
ancient chant of the Roman Church of the Middle Ages to musically anoint those close to death. We
have also used the Celtic lullaby and the mystical lieder of the visionary, Joa Bolendas. As the
mourning women would repeat the gol over and over, so do we employ repetition to entrain and to
build a musical field of medicinal sound, working with body systems phenomenology to help the
dying one rest and find peace in the closing chapter of their biography. As the gol is free of meter,
unbounded by the absence of a time signature, so also is the chant we sing to help those close to the
threshold of death unbind from that which may hold them to life, allowing them to enter into a
sacred and liminal space and prepare for their final ‘letting go’.
How to access and enter the liminal? How to connect with Origin? What is the pathway which leads
us into the realm of pure spirit where the song lives and is given power to heal? It is the death-bed
healing without curing that is the journey being taken in the work being done here in Missoula. We
live on the floor of an ancient glacial lake, the power of which carved out the Columbia River Gorge

8
when its plug of ice was released through global warming. Now this valley supports an initiative that
has to do with the future of the world and transformation of beliefs that fill the world with fear
about the demise of the physical body that is death. The music brings a power of release with it. It
brings the memory and the morphic resonance of all those who have ever sung the chant, lullaby or
lament. The power lies in awakening the beings of sound that connect one with the inside of things,
the distant past, the far future collapse into the present. They bring one into non-local time, a time
that is open to all other times, the boundaries are dissolved and one is with those in the past,
present, and future, the community of the dead join with us, liminality has been reached, boundaries
no longer exist and the angels can be heard far off at first, and then closer as their travel moves them
through the other veils.
In pre-Christian times, there were ancient customs which were absorbed by the Roman Church,
burial rites which are still witnessed today. In the time of the Pagan ancestors, candles were burned
continuously until the funeral. This harks back to a belief that demons live in the darkness and
would be kept back by the fire and the power of the light. The bodies were washed with water
drawn from a sacred well to ‘protect them while passing through the realms of water to the land
under the wave – TIR-fo-Thom.’ (S. McSkimming 1992)
McSkimming continues:
‘When washed, the corpse was wrapped in the Eslene (death shirt) and laid on a fuat
or bier in the center of the home for seven days. Rush torches were kept burning for
seven days and nights. The rites would begin by the traditional practice of Caoine
(pronounced keena, the Anglicized word being keening). This would take the form
of great lamentation interspersed by periods of praise for the dead person. After
three days of Caoine and dependent on the status of the deceased, feasting and
games would be held in their honor, the corpse having a bowl placed on their chest
filled with food, and gold and weapons were laid out on the bier. This would
continue till the day of internment or cremation in some places.
On the morning of the burial, a visitor came bearing a measuring rod called a ‘fey’.
This rod, made of aspen and carved with Ogham letters and symbols, was used to
measure the deceased to ensure a proper fit within the final resting place. The
mourners would avert their eyes from this rod in awe and terror; it was thought that
if this rod caught your measure, your death was inevitable. Finally, at the setting of
the sun on the seventh day, the corpse would be carried by seven men or in a chariot
if of noble status and buried or burned depending on tribal custom.’

9
The role of the Chalice worker might be observed in this death-bed scene and washing of the body,
a ritual of which we have attended with music:
The women of the household arrange themselves at either side (of the corpse), and
the Caoine at once commences. They rise with one accord and moving their bodies
with a slow motion to and fro, their arms apart, they continue to keep up a heart
rending cry. This cry is interrupted for awhile to give the ban caointhe (the leading
keener), an opportunity of commencing. At the close of every stanza of the dirge, the
cry is repeated, to fill up, as it were, the pause, and then dropped; the woman then
again proceeds with the dirge, and so on to the close.
The only interruption which this manner of conducting a wake suffers is from the
entrance of some relative of the deceased, who, living remote, or from some other
cause, may not have been in at the commencement. In this case, the ban caointhe
ceases, all the women rise and begin the cry, which is continued until the newcomer
has cried enough.
The keener having finished a stanza of the keen, sets up the wail in which all the
mourners join. Then a momentary silence ensues, when the keener commences
again, and so on … each stanza ending in the wail.
The keener is usually paid for her services – the charge varying from a crown to a pound.
In this description from the book Ireland, Its Scenery and Heritage, by Mr. And Mrs. S. C. Hall,
there are a number of correlations between the keeners ritual use of sound and the work that we do
at the bedside. We also flank the bed on either side, a leader begins the song, the others follow.
There is a place of rest between each delivery. Family members may be lining the walls or by the
bedside with their loved one, the music will invite them to join with it and release the grief that lies
stilled yet ready to come forth. The music is the sacred well where one may drink. Just as the keeners
art allows a newcomer to the scene to weep their fill, the music provides a morphic field in which
those present may enter and rest from the fear and sense of impending loss that may engulf them.
The music provides solace and comfort, it joins all in the room, weaving together the communities
of the living and the dead. As the keener honors through song the person and life of the deceased,
so does the music thanatologist honor the dying person, creating a sacred space, a temenos, at the
deathbed. This sacred atmosphere brought about through the agency of ancient chant makes thin
the veil between the worlds and creates a bridge between this world and the next.
11

1 0
1
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2
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3
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5
Ca rm ic h a e l. Ca rm in a G a d e lic a .
6
Co llin g s o n .
7
Ib id .
8
To k u m a ru , Y o s h ik o . De a th : Its Sy m b o lis m in M u s ic. M ita Pre s s , 1 9 9 1 .
9
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1 1

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