wake

wake, a festive gathering round the body of a dead person prior to burial. Relatives, neighbours, and friends gathered to spend a night in drinking, singing, dancing, story‐telling, and other amusements. Similar festive gatherings have been reported in both European and non‐European societies from early times. Within Ireland itself they were to be found, at least up to the early 19th century, in Protestant Ulster as well as elsewhere. The custom can be interpreted as a means of honouring the dead person by a last feast in his or her honour. Alternatively it has been seen as an assertion of continuity and vitality in the face of mortality, a perspective which helps to explain the explicit sexual content of some of the rituals and games reported at Irish wakes. From at least the early 17th century wakes were condemned by the Catholic church as occasions of drunkenness, immorality, and impiety. But the tradition of a festive gathering remained strong up to the late 19th century or beyond, giving way at length to the more decorous assembly, characterized by collective prayer and expressions of sympathy, which survives in some circles up to the present.