#caoineadh

[bean-na-farraige-agus-foraoise]

Gods, I just..... I love the tradition of keening so much. Everything I learn about it is just *chef’s kiss*. It’s beautiful and raw and powerful and is just as much for the dead as it is for the living-  the meter that the keen is composed in (Rosc) is one of the oldest Irish meters and it’s just- it’s just so beautiful. I’m like crying just thinking about the love behind it, the dedication to learn an ancient meter well enough to be able to compose a poem on the spot extolling the virtues and successes of the dead, the grief and loss, the anger at the passing of the deceased- this labor borne out of love to ensure that the deceased is brought to be with their ancestors, that they make it safely to the otherworld. A task that bears such importance that it used to be an act one could be payed to perform. Performed by women and repeatedly referred to as “savage” by outsiders who viewed the ritual with trepidation- an act so private and sacred that anthropologists and folklorists often refused to engage in funerals with keening so as not to intrude (resulting in the lack of recorded keening texts)- an act which almost 200 years of active extermination efforts preached from parish pulpits could not quash. The violence and rage and bitterness of grief laid bare before the dead, who are said to hear and comprehend the words of those they leave behind until three shovels of dirt have been spilled onto their coffin- a poem and a song that’s not so much singing but screaming in tune, focused more on the language than any tune one could place to the words. And it’s followed by revelry- games and music and dancing- a celebration of the deceased and a showing that life goes on, that the community and the family exist outside of their grief and that it’s possible to move on from our anger and bitterness. It’s just... so beautiful, everything about it is perfect. 

[catskewl]

Róis: Mo Léan review | Jude Rogers' folk album of the month

Singer Rose Connolly expands the pre-Christian Irish grieving tradition with synthesisers, distortion and drone in an arresting set

The artwork for Mo Léan Róis

Rose Connolly is Róis, a startling singer from County Fermanagh, whose first release explores the pre-Christian Irish tradition of caoineadh (keening). Here, a woman would “keen” a lamenting wail at a graveside to release the intensity of her grief and relinquish her fear of death. Largely improvised and rhythmically free, somewhat like sean-nós singing in style, the practice had almost died out by the early 20th century after discouragement by the Catholic church. Connolly fills it with new, startling life, mixing the ancient with synthesis, distortion and drones.

In the Connemara vernacular, the title means “woe is me” or even “FFS”; five long tracks are shaped around striking interludes, including the tolling bells heard before the Irish 6pm news and a darkly funny radio announcement apologising for the lack of death notices that day. Opening track What Do You Say marries mournful bass guitar with Connolly’s initially tentative, chanted vocals, sung into a granulator, before they build to a climax of high-pitched feeling. Cití, a reinterpretation of a song by County Donegal’s Cití ní Ghallchóir, begins with Connolly’s sighs and a steady pulse before the brightness of the Taishogoto (a Japanese harp) suggests the joy around other social interactions that can happen at a wake.

[ilivebetweenconcretewalls-blog]

'“Keening” in English suggests a high-pitched, inarticulate moaning, but the Irish word caoineadh, from which it derives signifies among other things, a highly articulate tradition of women's oral poetry. The lamenting woman led the community in a public display of grief. Acting out in her appearance and behaviour the disorder brought about by death, she was often barefoot and dishevelled. Her caoineadh or lament was a series of breathless utterances of rhymed, rhythmic praise of the dead person (usually a man), and invective against his enemies.'

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277539588900659

[momo-de-avis]

Do you know when you eat that one slice of chocolate cake that tastes like glowing rainbows on a sunny day after a heavy rain and the smell of wet dirt and a light humidity, or when you wear that freshly-out-of-the-dryer fluffy sweater that smells of citrus and vanilla and feels like you're wrapped around in sweet clouds and are as comfortable as when your grandmother used to make you a hot cup of tea with those home made biscuits in the coldest day of December while watching Home Alone with those old, fluffy socks on and under the covers on the sofa?

Yeah, this is what this song feels like

[kooperdoopers]

okay so i read this and just burst into tears and that doesn't happen so it's kind of a big deal, for me.

CAOINEADH  i gcuimhne mo mháthar 

Chaoin mé na cuileatacha ar ucht mo mháthara  An lá a bhásaigh Mollie — peata de sheanchaora  Istigh i gcreagacha crochta na Beithí.  Á cuartú a bhí muid lá marbhánta samhraidh  Is brú anála orainn beirt ag dreasú na gcaorach  Siar ó na hailltreacha nuair a tímid an marfach  Sna beanna dodhreaptha. Préacháin dhubha ina scaotha  Á hithe ina beatha gur imigh an dé deiridh aisti  De chnead choscrach amháin is gan ionainn iarraidh  Tharrthála a thabhairt uirthi thíos sna scealpacha.  Ní thiocfaí mé a shásamh is an tocht ag teacht tríom;  D’fháisc lena hucht mé is í ag cásamh mo chaill liom  Go dtí gur chuireas an racht adaí ó íochtar mo chroí.  D’iompair abhaile mé ansin ar a guailneacha  Ag gealladh go ndéanfadh sí ceapairí arán préataí. 

Inniu tá mo Theangaidh ag saothrú an bháis.  Ansacht na bhfilí — teangaidh ár n-aithreacha  Gafa i gcreagacha crochta na Faillí  Is gan ionainn í a tharrtháil le dásacht.  Cluinim na smeachannaí deireanacha  Is na héanacha creiche ag teacht go tapaidh,  A ngoba craosacha réidh chun feille.  Ó dá ligfeadh sí liú amháin gaile — liú catha  A chuirfeadh na creachadóirí chun reatha,  Ach seo í ag creathnú, seo í ag géilleadh;  Níl mo mháthair anseo le mé a shuaimhniú a thuilleadh  Is ní dhéanfaidh gealladh an phian a mhaolú. 

*

LAMENT  in memory of my mother 

I cried on my mother’s breast, cried sore  The day Mollie died, our old pet ewe  Trapped on a rockface up at Beithí.  It was sultry heat, we’d been looking for her,  Sweating and panting, driving sheep back  From the cliff-edge when we saw her attacked  On a ledge far down. Crows and more crows  Were eating at her. We heard the cries  But couldn’t get near. She was ripped to death  As we suffered her terrible, wild, last breath  And my child’s heart broke. I couldn’t be calmed  No matter how much she’d tighten her arms  And gather me close. I just cried on  Till she hushed me at last with a piggyback  And the promise of treats of potato-cake. 

To-day it’s my language that’s in its throes,  The poets’ passion, my mothers’ fathers’  Mothers’ language, abandoned and trapped  On a fatal ledge that we won’t attempt.  She’s in agony, I can hear her heave  And gasp and struggle as they arrive,  The beaked and ravenous scavengers  Who are never far. Oh if only anger  Came howling wild out of her grief,  If only she’d bare the teeth of her love  And rout the pack. But she’s giving in,  She’s quivering badly, my mother’s gone  And promises now won’t ease the pain. 

by Cathal Ó Searcaigh [translated by Seamus Heaney] 

[caoineadh]

Thach's Blue

'There was a hypnotic fascination to the sight so alien to our Western philosophy. We watched each plunging kamikaze with the detached horror of one witnessing a terrible spectacle rather than as the intended victim. We forgot self for the moment as we groped hopelessly for the thought of that other man up there.' -- Vice Admiral C.R. Brown, U.S.N.

[caoineadh]

Cantamar

In memory of H.S. Machado.