{"id":636426,"date":"2026-08-14T07:52:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T07:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/636426\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T07:52:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T07:52:19","slug":"oliver-callan-learns-about-keening-theyd-pull-out-hair-rip-clothes-reveal-their-breasts-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/636426\/","title":{"rendered":"Oliver Callan learns about keening: \u2018They\u2019d pull out hair, rip clothes, reveal their breasts\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Death stalks Tuesday\u2019s edition of Oliver Callan<\/b> (RT\u00c9<\/a> Radio 1), as wake expert Ann Moylan pops in to explore this oldest of traditions. Moylan\u2019s interest began as an ethnomusicological study of music, specifically the bean chaointe, or \u201ckeening women\u201d, whose elaborate, mournful singing accompanied these ceremonies in times gone by.<\/p>\n

She traces the earliest evidence of keening in Ireland to the fifth century, and further back still in Greece, Egypt and several Nordic countries. In an age of sanitised death, Moylan argues, it does us well to remember the immediacy and power that such rites had even recently, with keening rituals remaining into the early 20th century and traditional wakes still common in our more recent past.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe as children would be sent down to wakes,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019d have to kiss dead bodies and pat them on the head or shake hands with them \u2013 and we completely accepted it.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to what went on in more historical times, we can thank our nearest neighbours \u2013 \u201cthe pearl-clutching English\u201d as Callan<\/a> impishly describes them \u2013 who wrote down disapproving accounts of keening practices for posterity in the 19th century.<\/p>\n

Moylan is indebted to these accounts, despite the fact they amount to little more than \u201cmisery tourism\u201d, to use her memorable wording.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the keening women got going, they would build themselves up to such a divine intoxication … they\u2019d pull out clumps of their hair, rip their clothes, revealing their breasts no less, building themselves up to that divine hysteria, if you like. So if you couldn\u2019t punish death, you\u2019d punish yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Should one surmise these were entirely spontaneous outpourings of reverence, Moylan is on hand to dispel such a notion, for these were professionals. <\/p>\n

Good keeners were sought after, and particularly prized proponents would be transported cross-country, wild-haired and barefoot, sometimes even covered in ashes and white face-paint. And they were paid. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou would not dream of having a wake without them\u201d she says, \u201cSo, in life, you were constantly saving for your wake, and you couldn\u2019t just have any old keeners, you had to have the ones with the gift of poetry … and it was very important that absolutely everyone in that wake house was crying, not just a little tear or a sniffle \u2013 we\u2019re talking bellowing, screeching, even. Even if it was just your postman, you were part of that catharsis together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Any listeners wondering, after all of that, what this shared catharsis could possibly have sounded like, are treated to a recording of a rendition arranged and conducted by Moylan herself, resulting in one of the more haunting, but fascinating, bits of brunch time listening you might expect of a summer\u2019s morning.<\/p>\n

\"Newstalk'sNewstalk’s Anton Savage. <\/p>\n

On that day\u2019s Newstalk Breakfast<\/b>, Anton Savage<\/a> invited Dr Ray Butler, head of physics at University of Galway about Wednesday\u2019s solar eclipse<\/a>. Much was made of lunar transits and solar occlusions, but it fell on his following guest, Optometry Ireland president Liz Grennan, to dispel more thoroughly the notion that even a quick glance at an eclipse would be fine. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo, even my daughter said it to me last night and I thought, \u2018Oh lord\u2019. There is no safe way to look at the sun with your own two eyes … even a welding mask is not good enough to look at an eclipse.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this, Savage provides an immediate retort, \u201cLiterally as you say that, a text has come in saying \u201cI\u2019ll bring the welding mask home and\u201d \u2013 the words are barely out before the horrified optometrist exclaims: \u201cNO, NO, NO!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRetinal burns are what we\u2019re worried about,\u201d she tells us. \u201cThis can happen really quickly, within a matter of seconds … if you can imagine in all those Tom & Jerry cartoons where they shine a magnifying glass on to something and it bursts into flames, it\u2019s pretty much what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou won\u2019t feel pain,\u201d she continues, warming to her theme. \u201cThere are no pain receptors in the retina, it\u2019ll seem very bright, but it may be several hours, even 24, before you realise that that little after-image is still hanging around in the middle of your eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine,\u201d she implores, \u201chaving that for the rest of your life. Any time you want to sign your name or look at something up close or even far away, you\u2019ve got a lovely little eclipse in the middle of your eyeball.\u201d<\/p>\n

The welder in Savage\u2019s replies was undeterred, however. \u201cHe wants to fight with you,\u201d says our host, \u201cAnd he\u2019s equipped with either Gemini or Claude so brace yourself: \u2018According to AI<\/a>, a welding mask that can achieve shade 12 or more is sufficient\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d replies the good eye-doctor, perhaps wondering if her attempts to provide public health information to Ireland\u2019s airwaves in 2026 are a fool\u2019s errand, \u201cWe all know AI is never wrong. I\u2019ll just leave it there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moment of the Week\"ClaireClaire Brock. Photograph: Brian McEvoy <\/p>\n

On Monday, Claire Brock<\/a> \u2013 standing in for David McCullagh on RT\u00c9 Radio 1 \u2013 has freelance journalist \u00c9daein O\u2019Connell in to talk about the best way to launch a relationship on social media. An audibly bemused Brock begins by asking whether her listeners \u201csoft launch a relationship with a mysterious glimpse of a hand or a shoulder, or do you go all-in, with the full-face hard launch?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is all news to me,\u201d she says over O\u2019Connell\u2019s laughter, \u201cI\u2019m too long out of that game\u201d. What follows is an enterprising attempt by O\u2019Connell to elucidate her host on the various strategies of public boyfriend unveilings. Is this a silly fad toward public oversharing, or a modern, romantic dilemma that people genuinely have to deal with?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big one, and a conversation I have with friends a lot,\u201d says O\u2019Connell. \u201cIt was something I was humming and hawing about myself. So what I started to do was the soft launch, which is where you\u2019re giving dribs and drabs. It\u2019s so cringey but it\u2019s funny. I\u2019ll be watching people\u2019s stories and you know the way you follow people and you get used to their rhythms, and all of a sudden you\u2019ll see them away, or with a pint of Guinness beside the glass of wine.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd there\u2019s nothing innocent about that pub table shot?\u201d asks a baffled Brock. \u201cNo,\u201d says O\u2019Connell, \u201cIt\u2019s all planned. There\u2019s the back of the head, or an ear, or something like that. And then the hard launch is where you go full at it and put the full-blown picture up, and the tag, and whatnot\u201d.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connell\u2019s own attempts at softer options hit the rocks when enterprising sleuths noticed her unseen holiday companion was not her regularly featured father. \u201cI thought: I\u2019m not going to put it up on Instagram,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no need. Sure, who cares anyway? But what actually happened was, I\u2019m from Kerry, and obviously we were playing Mayo in the All-Ireland and I\u2019d had a few glasses of wine, and I was like, okay, I\u2019m gonna hard launch because I need to feel something for twenty minutes.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cYou survived it,\u201d proffers her host.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d replies O\u2019Connell, mildly abashed, \u201cThere\u2019s not much going on in my life if that\u2019s the hardest decision I had to make.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Death stalks Tuesday\u2019s edition of Oliver Callan (RT\u00c9 Radio 1), as wake expert Ann Moylan pops in to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[23901,289,268939,18,117,19,17,5287,63969,1181,26730],"class_list":["post-636426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-anton-savage","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-claire-brock","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-newstalk-radio","tag-oliver-callan","tag-rte","tag-solar-eclipse"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117092781843772000","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}