Photo by Andre Ouellet on Unsplash
In the moments after death, when a body grows cold and the grief is still raw, Irish tradition called for keening—the practice of wailing, lamenting, and ululating over the deceased. This wasn’t hysteria or loss of control but rather a highly formalized art form, often performed by skilled women who knew how to express grief in ways that transformed private sorrow into communal acknowledgment. The keen, the mournful cry, carried the deceased’s story, celebrated their life, mourned their absence, and called the entire community to witness and participate in grief.
Keening represents one of the most distinctive and emotionally powerful elements of Irish funeral tradition, yet it’s largely disappeared from modern practice. Understanding keening means understanding how Irish culture understood death, grief, mourning, and the role of women in communal ritual. It also reveals something about how cultures create forms and structures for emotions that might otherwise overwhelm us, and how transforming private grief into artistic expression gives it shape and meaning.
For Americans interested in Irish culture and tradition, keening offers insight into how death was approached differently in Irish tradition—not hidden away or denied, but met with ritualized expression, communal witnessing, and artistic form. The study of keening also reveals the power of voice, of lamentation, of women’s ritual work in maintaining community bonds and processing collective grief.
The Historical Context: Keening in Irish Society
Keening as a formal practice was widespread throughout Ireland from at least the medieval period through into the 20th century, though it has largely disappeared in contemporary Irish culture. References to keening appear in medieval Irish texts, in the accounts of English travelers and colonizers who found the practice unfamiliar and sometimes disturbing, and in folklore and folk memory preserved through the 19th and 20th centuries.
Keening took place at specific moments in the death and burial process. When someone died, the body would be laid out, and keening would begin. The keen would continue through the night (the traditional Irish wake, where the body was kept in the home for viewing and mourning) and might continue to the graveyard and through the burial. The keen was not a spontaneous crying out but a structured, often poetic expression of grief that could last for extended periods.
In pre-Christian and early Christian Ireland, keening was deeply embedded in the social structure. Certain women, particularly older women or professional mourners, were recognized as skilled keeners. These women had the ability to express grief beautifully and powerfully. They would be called upon for important deaths, particularly the deaths of significant people in the community. To have a skilled keener at your funeral was considered important; it ensured that your death would be properly mourned and that your life would be properly acknowledged.
The practice persisted through the medieval period and into early modern times, though Christianity brought some ambivalence about keening. The Church sometimes viewed keening as pagan, excessive, or emotional in ways that seemed contrary to Christian stoicism. Yet keening persisted, and in many cases, it became incorporated into Christian funeral practices. The keen became a way of honoring the dead that was understood as compatible with Christian tradition, though Church authorities sometimes attempted to limit or regulate it.
By the 19th century, keening remained common in rural Ireland, though it was becoming less practiced in urban areas or among the educated and Anglicized portions of Irish society. The Great Famine and subsequent rural depopulation through emigration disrupted traditional practices including keening. As the 20th century progressed and Irish society modernized, urbanized, and increasingly adopted English funeral customs, keening faded. By the late 20th century, keening was rare and largely practiced only in the most traditional rural communities.
The Art Form: Structure and Meaning
Keening was not mere wailing but rather a highly structured and artistic form of lamentation. The keen had particular characteristics that distinguished it from ordinary crying or grief expression:
The caoin (the keen itself) was typically performed by women, often by the female relatives of the deceased or by hired professional mourners. The keen involved rhythmic, often high-pitched wailing, sometimes ululating (a rolling, undulating cry), sometimes structured around words or phrases. The keen could be wordless, expressing pure emotion through sound, or it could incorporate words, phrases, stories, or even poetic verses.
The poetic dimension of keening was particularly significant. A skilled keener would weave into the keen references to the deceased’s life, achievements, character, family connections, and the loss their death represented. The keen might include verses, might tell stories, might make specific references that would be meaningful to the community listening. In this way, the keen was not simply emotional expression but also a form of commemoration, of ensuring the deceased’s life and memory were preserved and honored.
The communal participation was essential. While a skilled keener might lead the keen, others would join in, repeating phrases, supporting the emotional expression, adding their own voices. The keen was a communal act; it involved the gathering of people who were connected to the deceased, who were willing to witness and participate in the grief. The keen called the community to remember, to mourn, to honor the dead.
The physical expression of keening involved the whole body: the high-pitched voice, the swaying or rocking motion, sometimes the tearing of clothing or the striking of breasts (traditional gestures of mourning in many cultures). The keen engaged the whole person and sometimes engaged the whole gathered community in a shared emotional experience.
The keen served multiple purposes: it allowed grief to be expressed and witnessed; it honored the deceased by ensuring their life was remembered and mourned; it called the community to acknowledge and process loss; it transformed private grief into artistic and communal expression; it created a container for emotions that might otherwise be overwhelming.
The Keeners: Women’s Ritual Work
Keening was specifically women’s work. While men participated in other aspects of funeral rituals, the actual keening was performed by women. This reflects broader patterns in Irish culture where women were traditionally responsible for ritual work around birth, fertility, and death—the liminal moments that marked transitions and transformation.
In communities where keening was practiced, certain women became known as skilled keeners, particularly older women. These women had the talent, the training, and the emotional depth to express grief beautifully and powerfully. A family might hire a skilled keener for an important death, particularly if the family didn’t have women skilled enough to do the keening themselves.
The role of the keener was prestigious and valued. To be recognized as a skilled keener was to have a particular kind of power and importance in the community. The keener was trusted with the most important emotional work of the funeral—expressing grief, honoring the dead, facilitating the community’s mourning. This gave women a crucial ritual role that was recognized and valued, even in a society where women’s power was otherwise limited.
The keener’s skill involved understanding both the emotional and the poetic dimensions of the work. A skilled keener knew how to build emotion, how to move the listeners, how to express particular kinds of grief (the grief for a young person cut down too early would be different from grief for an old person who lived a full life), how to honor the specific deceased with references to their life and character. This required emotional intelligence, poetic ability, and knowledge of the community and the deceased.
In some accounts, keening was understood almost as a spiritual practice, as if the keener was channeling the grief of the entire community or even communicating with the dead. The keener’s voice, in this understanding, was not entirely their own but was a vehicle for expressing something larger than individual emotion.
The Wake: Keening’s Larger Context
Keening took place within the context of the Irish wake, a funeral tradition that involved the body being kept in the home for a night (or sometimes multiple nights) before burial. During the wake, keening took place, but other activities also occurred: storytelling, eating and drinking (the wake feast), prayers, games, and socializing. The wake was a complex social event that served multiple purposes.
The wake allowed the community to gather, to support the family of the deceased, to participate in the grieving process, and to maintain community bonds in the face of loss. The presence of the body was central—it meant that the dead person was literally present, visible, physically present in the home and community. This made the death real and undeniable. It also meant that the gathered community could pay respects, could see and acknowledge the person who had died.
Keening took place in this context. It was not the entire wake but was one element of it. The keen would be performed at particular moments, perhaps in waves throughout the night, with other activities interspersed. The keen would build in intensity at certain moments—when the body was first being prepared, when the funeral cortège was about to leave, at the graveyard—then would ebb as other activities resumed.
The wake represented a different approach to death than modern funeral practices. Modern practice typically separates the dead from the living: the body goes to a funeral home, the funeral service is brief and controlled, the body is then taken for burial, and the grieving occurs privately. In the Irish wake tradition, the dead remained in the community, in the home, for an extended period. Grief was not private but communal. The dead person was not removed from view but was present, was visited, was acknowledged.
The Decline: Why Keening Faded
Keening declined for several overlapping reasons. Urbanization and modernization brought new funeral practices from English and urban Irish contexts, practices that didn’t include keening. The Catholic Church, while eventually accepting keening as compatible with Christian practice, never fully embraced it enthusiastically, and Church authorities sometimes worked to discourage it, particularly in urban and educated contexts.
The Great Famine and subsequent emigration disrupted traditional practices. Communities were broken up, people were scattered, the intergenerational transmission of cultural practices was interrupted. As Ireland modernized in the 20th century, new funeral practices became standard: funerals in churches rather than at home, funeral homes, professional mourning, and controlled emotional expression became the norm.
Keening also became associated with “Irishness” in ways that weren’t always positive. English colonizers had found keening strange and unfamiliar, and as Irish society internalized English cultural norms and values, practices like keening came to be seen as backwards, primitive, or overly emotional. Educated Irish people often abandoned keening as they sought to be seen as modern and civilized, adopting English funeral practices instead.
By the mid-20th century, keening had largely disappeared even in rural Ireland. The knowledge of how to keen, the skill of expressing grief poetically, the understanding of keening as an important ritual form—these were largely lost. Among the elderly, some memory of keening persisted, but for younger generations, it became a historical practice rather than a living one.
Modern Perspectives: Keening and Grief
In contemporary times, there’s been some revival of interest in keening, particularly among those interested in Irish cultural recovery, among modern pagans and those practicing Celtic spirituality, and among those interested in alternative approaches to grieving and death.
Some scholars and cultural historians have become interested in keening as an important expression of Irish culture and have worked to preserve knowledge and recordings of the practice. Some recordings of traditional keeners exist, preserved from the early 20th century when recording technology became available. These recordings allow contemporary people to hear what keening actually sounded like, to experience the emotional power of the practice even second-hand.
Some people have attempted to revive keening in contemporary contexts. At funerals or memorial services, some people incorporate keening elements—wailing, ululating, structured lamentation—into the proceedings. This practice remains relatively rare, but it represents a conscious choice to recover and use an important Irish cultural tradition.
There’s also growing recognition, more broadly, of the value of structured, ritualized grief expression. Modern grief counseling and thanatology (the study of death) recognize that containment of grief and the discouragement of emotional expression can be psychologically damaging. Keening, in this light, was a psychologically sophisticated practice: it provided a structure and a form for grief, it allowed it to be expressed fully, it transformed private grief into something that could be witnessed and shared. For those grieving, participating in or witnessing keening could be cathartic and healing.
The Larger Significance: Women, Grief, and Ritual
Understanding keening requires understanding larger patterns about women’s roles in culture and ritual. Across many cultures and periods, women have been associated with ritual work around liminality—births, deaths, marriages—moments of transition and transformation. In Irish culture, keening represents one of the most important examples of this pattern.
The fact that keening was women’s work, performed primarily by women, valued in communities, and understood as an important skill and gift meant that women had a specific kind of power and importance in their communities. At moments of greatest vulnerability—death—women’s voices were essential. Their ability to express emotion, to create beauty in lamentation, to help the community process grief was recognized and valued.
This contrasts with later modern funeral practices, where emotional control is valued, where the body is handled by professionals rather than by community members, where extended grieving is discouraged. In the shift from keening to modern funeral practices, women’s ritual role was diminished, the community’s collective participation in grief was reduced, and emotional expression was increasingly controlled and managed.
Conclusion: The Lost Art of Grief
Keening represents a way of approaching death and grief that modern culture has largely abandoned. It was not about denying death or suppressing grief, but rather about meeting death and grief with ritual, with community, with artistic expression, and with a recognition that grief was important, significant, and deserving of beauty and form.
For Americans interested in Irish heritage, keening offers insight into how Irish culture understood death differently than modern Western culture does. It reveals the sophistication of traditional culture—keening was not a primitive practice but rather a complex art form requiring skill, sensitivity, and emotional depth.
For those interested in alternative approaches to grief and mourning, keening offers a model of grief that is expressed rather than suppressed, that is communal rather than private, that is given artistic and ritual form, and that honors the dead through beautiful lamentation.
The practice of keening has largely faded, but its memory persists in Irish culture and history. In some communities, particularly those consciously working to preserve Irish traditions, keening has not been entirely forgotten. And for those interested in recovering this lost art—in creating new forms of lamentation, in giving ritual form to grief, in using voice and community to honor the dead—keening offers a rich example of how to do so with beauty, meaning, and power.
Author: jonathan
Jonathan is the publisher of Irishtopia.net, Anglotopia.net, and Londontopia.net. He's passionate about travel and learning about other cultures. He's been to Ireland several times, and uses his travel expertise for Irishtopia!
