Further thoughts on Burials:
a companion essay to Pagan Burial for Modern Pagans
B ni Bhroinn
One of the strange things about paganism can be the fact that there are no set rites and rituals for the three "big events", birth death and marriage. Marriage has sort of "organically" grown its own rites, with the popularity of handfasting, Birth rites are hardly practiced by any sector of society anymore (except of course the time honoured "give me some drugs [B]now!![/B] " ritual) :lol: and the "you bastard you got me into this state" man-bashing ritual :thwack: :thwack:
But we all die, and death rituals are one of the most important parts of the grieving process...while obviously there are no extant celtic or preceltic rituals in Ireland there are some rites, traditions and superstitions connected with death that give us an insight into what our ancestors may have thought.
Here are some of them:
If you meet a funeral coming towards you, you must turn and walk a few paces with it: failure to do so mocks the dead, makes them restless and also means you will die alone and un-mourned.
To place a flower on the grave of a stranger is a kindness that will be repaid to you after your death.
Mirrors in a house where a body lies must be covered in black from the moment of death until the body is removed : the "other side" can use a death to peer into the house and if they like it they might just take up residence there. They fairies can take a spite against someone by looking through the mirrors or the dead gone before can look through and be saddenned by the sight of relatives...in some few brave households this would mean looking into one of the mirrors and giving an update to the otherside but most took the "least said soonest mended" attitude :) :)
A body must be waked for three days and nights: only murderers, and traitors could be buried immediately.
And last but not least, being buried with your people ensured they would continued to live in that area.
These few samples show more than a peasant superstition: they show the vestiges of a culture that placed great emphasis on honour and on achievement during life, and a sense that at seminal times the veil between this and other realities was thin and could be breached. They show people's fear, not of death, but of being forgotten, un-mourned or dishonoured at the time of death and after. To remember the dead is still one of the great traditions even of modern Ireland. There are dozens more from all the country, and these themes are present in almost all of them.
But perhaps most importantly of all is the idea that burial in an area helped cement your people’s claim to that area. Archaeologists postulate that part of the reason for ceremonial interments is a symbolic act saying, “This is our land”. And this impulse has continued in folk custom until today. This can explain why magnificent pre-Celtic structures such as Newgrange aren’t mass cemeteries, containing only a tiny fraction of the people needed to build such a complex. Instead these are representative burials.
From the more literary traditions of the old order there are stories of the deaths of gods, heroes and the passing of kings, all of which concentrate on whether or not they were buried in pomp and ceremony: Tailtiu died clearing the forests of the Midland Plains, (perhaps where they got the wood for that temple under Tara :lol: ) and her loving and dutiful fosterson Lugh
held a month of funerary games in her honour. The Hero of Ulster died the most glorious death, fatally wounded, strapping himself to a tree and fighting to defend his province until the last breath of his body: an act eerily echoed in the death thousands of years later of James Connolly. For his glorious death he recieved little in the way of a glorious burial, however.
But by far the most moving funerary account comes to us from the chief poet or filiocht, who laments in the time of early Christianity the death of the most promising, brightest pupil of the entire Filiocht school - his beloved son. He describes the pride he felt for him and his one comfort as being the magnificent memorial erected over his son for those who pass to see and wonder at: but it is, he admits, cold comfort.
From both strains - literary and folk custom - has come in modern times a renewal of interest in a "Celtic" or “Irish Pagan” burial for pagans: however for many neo-pagans the concept of a grand monument is alien, and communal graves no longer are in fashion, nor can I see Dublin County Council giving planning permission for my “mini-Newgrange” complex :lol: and so those looking to incorporate elements of old pagan forms into their own rituals have to do some heavy interpreting. But bearing in mind some basic principles of the Celtic/pre-Celtic Irish attitude toward life and death may help.*
Firstly the idea of being honoured in death and remembered has less to do with personal ego than may at first appear. Celts had little fear of death and believed they would be reborn in the otherworld immediately and live a full lifetime there. So why the need to be remembered? Partly because they believed each lifetime had its own importance and needed to be well-lived so that one could accumulate experiences and partly because they hoped to be reborn into the same clan or sept, into the same bloodline: with this in mind the need to be well remembered and honoured becomes the need to reinforce ones ties with blood and ancestral glory, to facilitate a good return.
The dead were entities who could be contacted so they were nearby and still accessible.
In death there was equality so different bones were mingled together (pre-celtic).
Honour towards the dead was “lucky” and also “proper” behaviour.
The challenge for modern Pagans is to marry our society’s restrictions about burial –where it can take place for example- with modern sensibilities and at the same time with original pagan ideas. One way is to have a body cremated, the ashes scattered in some significant place and a tree planted as a memorial. This draws together the main ideas, of acknowledging oneself as part of the earth, nature, part of those who went before, but in an space friendly, environment friendly manner: honouring the dead, but with a living rather than stone monument and promoting remembrance: and so forth. Just an example how pagan principles can be adopted for modern practices.
*(These are true for Irish paganism, and won’t hold true for the larger European Celtic culture on all points. As a rule of Thumb, Chieftain burials are more common among European celtic tribes and less so among Irish Celtic society )