'Obsessed with death': 5 uniqely Irish wake and funeral customs - Ireland News Beep

Analysis: From funeral sandwiches to talking to the bees, there are many traditions associated with the Irish reputation for doing death well

For all our foibles and failures, the Irish have a reputation for doing death well. There is a strong sense of reciprocity in attending Irish wakes and funerals. Irish people would travel long distances to attend a funeral of someone they had never personally met, particularly if they were somehow related, or if the deceased, or one of their relatives, had previously attended the funeral of one’s family member. Malachi Horan famously described an Irish wake as ‘a prayer for him that’s gone and a song for him that’s left.’

Former State Pathologist Marie Cassidy described the Irish as being ‘obsessed with death’, stating that attending funerals was their national sport. Instead of checking their horoscope, they noted that the Irish listen to the death notices on the radio, a phenomenon commented on by various anthropologists and folklorists. Within the Irish Folklore Commission’s Schools’ Collection topics index, there are 2,051 entries for ‘graveyards’, 1,076 for ‘death’, 369 for the ‘banshee’, and 173 for ‘wake games.’ Perhaps we are ‘obsessed’ with death.

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From RTÉ’s DocArchive, House Strictly Private looks at ritual of the Irish country wake and paying respects to those who have died (first broadcast 1975)

In this piece, I take a look at five elements from research on the history of wakes and funeral traditions in Ireland which I found particularly interesting: food traditions, telling the bees, graveyard clay, cross-cultural experiences and funereal humour.

Food and funerals

Ireland has an ancient tradition of hospitality. Scholarship on the role of hospitality within funerary traditions in Ireland notes the dearth of descriptions of the particular foods consumed. Whiskey, porter, poitín, tobacco, clay pipes and snuff feature regularly in the various historical accounts of Irish funerals, although the smoking ban and drink driving laws have altered practices in recent years.

Purveying and consuming food and drink provide something to do in the awkwardness of the funerary process, the transactions actualizing opportunities for community kindness and reciprocity, ranging from cups of tea and sandwiches to a full-blown three-course dinner with wine in a local restaurant or hotel. Comforting us in times of loss, food and drink are vehicles that help us to show compassion and sympathy as we commiserate with our friends, family, and neighbours, the act of commensality helping to fortify relationships and to provide moral support to the principal mourners.

From RTÉ Brainstorm, why food plays a major role in Irish wakes and funerals

Little research exists on this topic concerning the 21st century. Recent reseach reveals a link between rising wealth during the Celtic Tiger period (1995–2007) and sit-down meals in hotels. Sandwiches remain the iconic funeral food, particularly in the wake house, served alongside soup and copious cups of tea, with biscuits and cakes. The late Myrtle Allen recalled receiving information while writing for the Irish Farmers Journal about funeral buns and biscuits, which apparently were much in vogue in the mid-19th century. She further noted that the buns or biscuits fit into one hand, leaving the other free for a tumbler of whiskey.

Since they are slow-cooked, stews and casseroles are perfect comfort food to bring to a wake house; they will survive a few days, often improving with time, and can be reheated easily. An old Dublin woman told the food writer and actress Biddy White Lennon in the Long Hall public house that ‘Dublin coddle’ (sausage and bacon stew) was ‘grub for the Saherda [Saturday] nite and fur de funerals [sic], as it doesn’t spoil if its left for an hour or two too long.’ Plates of sandwiches and a Burco boiler remain essential components of Irish funerals.

Telling the bees

A fascinating food custom associated with death—and not restricted to Ireland—was to tell the bees of any death within the family and to cover hives with a black cloth, as if this was not done, the bees would leave. In a moving radio interview in September 2025, weeks before he died, the Irish writer and documentary maker Manchán Magan discussed how his neighbour had spoken to Manchán’s bees to tell them of his imminent death.

From RTÉ Radio 1’s Brendan O’Connor Show, Manchán Magan’s final interview

Graveyard clay

In Conamara and many parts of rural Ireland, it is customary for relatives to dig the grave, which is collectively filled following the interment while the mourners recite the rosary or musicians play a lament. We buried my father Liam in Deansgrange Cemetery in Dublin in May 2019. That morning, my cousin Mícheál had filled and brought a large bag of soil from Conamara, where my father was born and raised, and I spread this over his coffin as a protective blanket before we collectively filled in the grave.

In Dublin, the gravediggers usually fill in the grave after the mourners have left. Filling his grave in the Conamara fashion in Dublin, with cousins, neighbours, and friends taking their turn with the shovels, provided a form of consolation for the family.

In Donegal, there is a tradition of Gartan clay linked with the birthplace of St Colmcille. Folklore tells us that only members of the O’Friel family can lift the clay and that anyone who kept the clay on their person would never be known to be drowned. Many emigrants brought Gartan clay with them to keep them safe on their journey, and Donegal people buried in other parts of the country often had Gartan clay placed into the coffin or grave to protect them on their journey to the other world. The clay from the graves of murdered Penal Law era priests in Boho, Fermanagh and in Clogheen in Tipperary are also noted to have magical healing properties.

From RTÉ Archives, RTÉ News report on the opening of the Colmcille Heritage Centre on the shores of Lough Gartan in Co Donegal in 1988

Cross-cultural experiences

It is not uncommon to turn up with some food at a wake-house in Ireland. An Irish friend discussed her cross-cultural experience of arriving at her employer’s home in London following his mother’s death in the early 1990s, and the confused look on his face as she handed him a cooked chicken wrapped in tinfoil.

In Conamara, it is customary to fill the grave. At my grandfather’s burial, when the grave was two-thirds filled, my father’s cousin Tomás stood in the grave and jumped up and down to firm down the sand and ensure it was packed into the corners. My American cousin from Chicago, who was at his first Irish funeral, and having heard rumours of what happens at them, thought that Tomás was dancing on the grave.

Funereal humour

Humour often peppers eulogies to provide light relief. One of the most memorable eulogies I recall was that of a neighbour, Jamie Doyle, who began his father’s eulogy by reading out some words that reminded him of his father: ‘Anger. . . Rage . . . Boy, he did rage well that day you got lost on Banna Strand! . . . But I’ve come to realise that in that rage was love’. He continued to note that he could not pass a chemist shop without thinking of their late father who convinced them as children that MPSI (Member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland) meant ‘monkey piss sold inside.’

A family friend who was tragically burying her son and daughter together, both having died within a short time of each other, described it to me as a BOGOF (buy one, get one free). We often use humour to handle grief. Humour, revelry, and games are a means of reasserting continuing vitality and the potential for renewal in the community after the disruption caused by death.

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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

‘Obsessed with death’: 5 uniqely Irish wake and funeral customs

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