“But his poor wife?”
“Ough! then it’s she that’s sorry for poor Tom, your honour! Whilst the keeners were washing and stretching the corpse, and she crying her eyes out of her head—oh, the cratur!—Father Corcoran whispered all as one as a mass, and plenty of comfort into Mrs. Dempsey’s own ear, cheek by jowl, and by my sowl the devil a drop of a tear came out of her afterward, plase your honour!”
What is termed the Irish cry, is keening on an extensive scale, and is perhaps the most terrific yell ever yet practised in any country.
It is used in processions on the roads, as the people are carrying a dead body to its place of interment—and occasionally, on any great misfortune where the lamentation should be general.
If there are twenty thousand persons in a procession, they all set up the same cry as the keeners, but a hundred times more horrid and appalling. It may be heard many miles from the spot.
One mode formerly of raising the people in the least possible time, was the carrying a coffin under pretence of a burial. The procession, which sets out probably with only a dozen persons, amounts in the course of an hour to some twenty thousand. When once the yell is set up, every person within hearing is expected immediately to join the corpse by the shortest road—scampering across fields, ditches, &c.; so that, as the numbers increase, the roar becomes more tremendous, and answers better than a hundred bells in bringing a population together.
It is usual for every man, woman, and child to pick up a stone or two, as they go along, and throw them into a heap, which tradition sometimes marks out as the site of some remarkable battle, murder, &c.
The above plan was occasionally resorted to by the insurgents in the year 1798; and there can be no doubt, if they all set out with processions at one hour of any given day, that it would be a tremendous species of muster for such a people as the Irish, who are as little known or understood by the generality of the English, as the Cossacks.
This cry certainly is not calculated to excite so great a variety of passions as Mr. Dryden attributes to the music at Alexander’s Feast. But I will venture to assert, that if his Macedonian Majesty had been ever so tipsy, and thoroughly bent upon ever so much mischief, one sudden, thundering burst of the Irish cry in his banqueting-room would have quickly brought Alexander and all his revellers to their senses—rendered their heels as light as their heads—and Miss Thais would have been left by her lover to the protection of Captain Rock and his merry men.
I believe the very best of our composers would find it rather difficult to set the Irish cry to music—though by the new light, every noise whatsoever must be a note or half a note; and it is reported that Mr. Moore and Sir John Stephenson used their joint and several efforts to turn this national cry into melody, but without success. I cannot see why such able persons should fail on so interesting a composition. There are plenty of notes in it whole and half, sharp, flat, and natural;—sufficient to compose any piece of music. It is only therefore to select the best among them scientifically; put an “andante affettuoso” in front; then send it to a barrel organ-builder;—and no doubt it would grind out to the entire satisfaction of the whole Irish population.