In this, probably the first reference in literature to the Irish wake, the suggestion that the departed one contributed anything more than the honor of his company must be taken with a grain of salt. Strabo was an awful liar, and whole barrels of salt might be used on his “Geography” without perceptibly affecting its flavor. In all probability the cannibal touch was nothing more than an unseemly concession to the yellow taste of the Attic metropolis.
Nevertheless, though he never appeared on the menu, the “departed relative,” the sine qua non of all festive gatherings, was (as the social instinct developed among the savage tribes) ever in increasing demand, and it is to be feared that in smart Ivernian circles it was not unusual to speed the departing relative in promoting the gaiety of an otherwise dull season.
Under such conditions it is hardly to be wondered at that in Ivernia, at that period, personal popularity was the most unpopular thing imaginable, and what more thinkable than that the reluctant candidate for a complimentary dinner should feign for the occasion the grewsome condition necessary for qualification.
With the spread of Christianity, this irksome feat of mimicry on the part of the Guest of Honor, at first a protective subterfuge, grew to be a social convention. And irksome indeed it was.
To feign at a banquet by the exercise of self-control a state of unconsciousness, joyfully achieved by one’s fellow guests through more convivial channels, was no task for the amateur. Then it was that, puffed up, comatose, obese, along came the Professional Diner Out. And now, after nearly two thousand years, what have we to show?
Could the savage rite, described by Strabo, depressing as it must have been, by any possibility be as gloomy as the Testimonial Banquet of today? Is the Guest of Honor, sitting at the High Table feigning unconsciousness, the miserable target for asphyxiating bombs of wit, of anecdote, and of reminiscence—is he any less to be pitied than the deceased relative of the Ivernian dinner? Yet we call ourselves civilized; we think it barbaric to hang a fellow being for anything short of murder. Why have we not equal consideration for the innocent Guest of Honor? Why do we not dine him in effigy?
Few of us have forgotten the outrage of 1912 when William Dean Howells was dragged from his comfortable fireside by Col. Harvey, then the editor of Harper’s Magazine, who deaf to his cries and entreaties, dined, wined and flashlighted in the presence of a frenzied mob armed to the teeth with knives, and forks and spoons.
How much more humane to have dined Mr. Howells in effigy! A waxen image simulating as far as possible the kindly features of the Great Novelist, sitting in the place of honor, bowing, even smiling by means of some ingenious mechanism! This, with a phonograph record of the graceful speech of acknowledgment, and the ravening public would have gone home happy and none the wiser. Thus with the dawn of a new era of Humanity, one more chapter of the ponderous book of martyrs would be closed forever.