Origins of the Irish Keen
Lamentation over the dead is archetypal; the very nature of archetypes is that they cross over all boundaries and divisions that we humans create, because an archetype is a representation of something that is common to all humankind. In Ireland, the lament shows up as a specific type of song, which is encased within the ritual of the wake and funeral of a deceased person. Lamentation is universal but the keen is a unique form of lamentation. In other words, the keen is an Irish lament but not all Irish laments are the keen! Mass emigration due to outside forces has certainly played a part in the spreading of Irish culture, but I commonly come across people with no known Irish ancestry who are drawn to the Irish Keen. What is it about the Irish version of lamentation that has evolved over millennia that makes it persist and continue to be internationally acknowledged, while other versions have fallen by the wayside or are strictly maintained within their own cultures? That is one of the questions that has driven me to write this book as I attempt to unravel the enigma that is the Irish Keen.
When examining the origins of the Irish Keen, we need to travel back through time to understand what influences have been at work to help shape this ancient funeral lament and what has contributed toward its longevity. I find myself fascinated by the journey of this ancient rite and acknowledge that as times, beliefs, and values changed, an essential practice for humans evolved.
Despite attempts (and there have been many) to destroy the practice, it has survived in some form—publicly at times, secretly at others—and despite having been driven underground in the last two centuries, it seems that interest in the keen is on the rise once again.
The Functions of the Keen
The keen is considered to be a mysterious genre of ancient Irish chant, and originally it had three primary functions: One was to provide comfort for the bereaved by creating a structure that gave permission and encouragement to mourners to express their grief; another was to honor and celebrate the life of the deceased; and the third (and this is one that has faded most over time) was to aid the spiritual transference of the soul of the deceased to the Otherworld.
When talking about the keen I find it helpful to separate it into two categories: what I call “organic keening” and “ritual keening.” Organic keening is a raw, vocal reaction, a spontaneous expression of unbridled grief to losing a loved one—the sort of reaction I had when the lid was hammered down on the coffin containing my mother’s body. Ritual keening on the other hand is a highly structured rite of passage and includes the organic keen. Ritual keening for millennia had specific functions, one of which appears to have been spiritual—that of helping the soul of the deceased move smoothly from this life to whatever was next in its evolution. Over time that function was taken over by Christian practice, and by the 1800s more emphasis was put on its other functions: helping mourners express grief and honoring the life of the deceased.
The use of language is important here. When the Irish talk about keening it is usually referring to the cry—the organic keen. When we talk about “being keened” it normally refers to the rite of passage where the keen is ritualized.
The spirals of early Irish art are highly symbolic; there was a belief that birth and death were on a continuum and everything in that continuum was intertwined, so in one sense it is impossible to separate these two inevitable rites of passage. History shows us how life and death were interlinked over millennia, sometimes emphasizing the organic side, at others the ritual side of the custom. Much of the confusion about the term “keen” arises from these dual meanings, but in the Irish Keen they are brought together. In other words, Irish Keening is a ritualized ceremony performed by expert singers, which encapsulates an organic response on the part of mourners.
Furthermore, the Irish Keen is considered to be a sacred practice that is contained within the context of the wake and funeral—hence one reason for the reluctance of keeners to perform a keen outside that context.
When we talk about Ireland it helps to know that because of the political decisions made one hundred years ago, it is a country divided, with twenty-six counties in the Republic of Ireland, which includes three of the counties in Ulster (Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan) and is now usually referred to simply as Ireland. The remaining six counties of Ulster remain part of the United Kingdom and are referred to as Northern Ireland or The North. This is the area of the Irish island that was subject to the thirty-year civil war euphemistically referred to as “The Troubles” and which only ended as we came into the twenty-first century.
I was fourteen years old when those Troubles literally exploded into our lives. Where I was raised the keen was dismissed as superstition at best, and demonized at worst. As mentioned above I was vaguely familiar with the term and knew it had something to do with funerals. Although things have now changed, in my Baby Boomer generation young children were not involved if there was a wake and we were definitely not included in the funeral!
I was six years old when my beloved Grandad died. My uncle who had a car (a rarity in those days) was commissioned to take all the children off in the car, as for some reason it was felt that it was not suitable for us to take part in the funeral. Looking at how things transpired, this may have had quite a lot to do with certain strict aunts of mine not wanting the raucousness of certain children (principally my good self) interrupting the solemnity of the occasion.
At any rate the car was full with the four of us from my family at that time (we eventually swelled to seven), including my two-year-old sister who kept wriggling and trying to escape, and our cousins from England, who had come over with their mother, my father’s sister, for Grandad’s funeral. I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but somehow or other my uncle took a wrong turn and ran smack into the funeral cortege where the mourners were walking behind the coffin.
That was enough for me. I climbed up the back of the seat (seat belts were an unknown quantity in those days) and started waving at the coffin with all the lovely flowers on top of it and quite cheerfully yelling at the top of my voice, “Bye bye, Grandad.” As far as I was concerned Grandad was going somewhere nice, like on a special holiday, because he had lovely flowers on top of a big brown box with him, which in my six-year-old mind was probably a special suitcase—the concept of death (or indeed suffocation in a big brown box) was outside the range of my imagination.
My oldest brother, who was all of eight, had managed to open the window and of course we were all now joining in with the hand waving and the chorus of “Bye bye, Grandad,” and my baby sister was screaming something incomprehensible, which generally added to the hullabaloo. I still remember the horrified look on my aunts’ faces, walking behind the coffin in the funeral cortege, the mortified look on my mother’s face as she followed them, and the sickly grin on my uncle’s face as he pushed his foot to the floor and we sped off in the opposite direction—causing us all to land in a tangle of limbs somewhere between the back seat and the floor of the car . . .
When my own father was dying half a century later, I felt my grandad’s (his dad’s) energy in the hospital room, and I remembered his funeral and thought that being a bit of a rebel in his own way, he had probably enjoyed the disruption that we youngsters had caused.
I doubt that my grandfather was keened but don’t really know, as the keen was shrouded in mystery and only spoken of in the same hushed tone of voice as used when referring to the fairies, who command their own brand of reverence and fear in Ireland. In other words, the keen was a concept that you simultaneously accepted and rejected but definitely did not publicly discuss!
Of course, historically the layering of realities in the Irish culture can be attributed to colonization over the last two millennia by firstly the Celtic Gaels, then Christian monks, then Vikings (Danes and Norwegians), then Anglo-Normans from Britain, then the English settlers and the Ulster plantations of Lowland Scots. When you are growing up in a community that is simultaneously Irish and British, Christian and Pagan, the knack for double thought comes easily . . . so the keen was one of those mysteries that you knew about, but knew nothing about! Just to further complicate things, the keen and ritual surrounding it showed up in different ways in the different areas of Ireland!
Bio: Mary Mc Laughlin, PhD, was born and raised in Northern Ireland and has lived, taught, and sung her way through Ireland, England, and the United States. Internationally acknowledged for her singing of Irish songs, songwriting, and teaching, she writes and teaches about the keen online. She currently lives in England. http://www.marymclaughlin.com/
The Irish Keen by Mary Mc Laughlin, PhD © 2026 Inner Traditions. Printed with permission from the publisher Inner Traditions International.
