Those who know anything of the peculiar customs of the South of Ireland, must be aware that the peasantry have especial delight in doing honor to the dead. To celebrate a "wake" is, with them, a social duty. They usually take that mode of testifying, in a merry mood, their grief for the departed. The unfortunate victim of military impetuosity was carried to the nearest public-house on the way-side, and when it was related how he had lost his life, "curses not loud, but deep," most unequivocally indicated the popular feeling that he was a murdered man. Nor was this feeling mitigated by the "justifiable homicide" verdict of the Coroner's jury.
Entertaining such opinions, it was not likely that his relatives and friends would solicit as a favor, at the hands of his slayers, "leave to keep the wake." They did not ask it. Perhaps they had little fear that, in the present instance, their ancient and time-honoured custom would be interfered with. Accordingly, they _took_ leave, and a numerous concourse of the people assembled, after dusk, on the day of the inquest, in the cabin of the deceased.
To one who loved the picturesque, the scene would have been interesting, for it contained all variety of countenance, costume, and manner. But it possessed an intenser and far deeper interest for him who had studied the human heart, its passionate throes, its indignant feelings, its wild energies, its strong convulsions, its lacerated affections. There lay the corpse, a crucifix at its head and twelve mould candles on a table at its feet. By the bedside knelt the widow--actually, by an unnatural excitement, rendered temporarily convalescent by the sharp fact that she had lost the husband of her heart. By the corpse, on the opposite side, sat their only child, a lad of few years, apparently unconscious of the extent of the calamity which thus early had orphaned him. A professional Keener (like the "hired wailing women" of Scripture) was ranged on either side of the deceased, awaiting a full audience for the similated grief, and now and then muttering fragments of their intended Lament. Around the humble apartment--for the peasant's cabin consisted of only a single room--were ranges of stools, three deep, and here and there were deal tables, on which were placed tobacco-pipes, and "the materials" for the refreshment and enjoyment which, by a strange contrast with the awful occasion which called them together, were considered indispensable. Such a thing as a _dry_ Wake would indeed have been an anomaly, there and then.