Irish Wake Amusements

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First published in Irish in 1961, and in English in 1967, this work covers the subject of traditional wakes in Ireland. As well as eating, drinking, smoking a pipe and taking snuff, many other forms of entertainment were common in Irish wakes, to pass the long hours of the night or two nights of the wake. These included storytelling, singing, dancing, music, card-playing, riddling and rhyming, and feats of agility and strength, both inside the wake-house and in an adjoining field, before the funeral started the next day. The book also shows that Ireland, far from being different from other countries, was part of the general European (and world) pattern in holding prolonged and merry wakes.