However these barbarous proceedings may serve to outrage the dignity, and even the decency, of death, they have not always been absolutely useless. If the ravings, and rantings, the drunkenness, and the bloody brawls, that have sometimes occurred, during the celebration of an _Irish wake_, have proved unavailing, in raising the dead, or in exciting the lethargic soul--they have, certainly, sometimes sufficed, to restore consciousness to the cataleptic, who were supposed to be dead, and about to be committed to the grave. In April, 1804, Barney O'Brien, to all appearance, died suddenly, in the town of Ballyshannon. He had been a terrible bruiser, and so much of a profligate, that it was thought all the priests, in the county of Donegal, would have as much as they could do, of a long summer's day, to confess him. It was concluded, on all hands, that more than ordinary efforts would be required, for the _waking_ of Barney O'Brien's soul. A great crowd was accordingly gathered to the shanty of death. The mountain dew was supplied, without stint. The howling was terrific. Confusion began. The altercation of tongues was speedily followed, by the collision of fists, and the cracking of shelalahs. The yet uncovered coffin was overturned. The shock, in an instant, terminated the trance. Barney O'Brien stood erect, before the terrified and flying group, six feet and four inches in his winding sheet, screaming, at the very top of his lungs, as he rose--"_For the love o' the blissed Jasus, jist a dhrap o' the crathur, and a shelalah!_" In a former number, I have alluded to the subject of premature interment. A writer, in the London Quarterly, vol. lxiii. p. 458, observes, that "there exists, among the poor of the metropolitan districts, an inordinate dread of premature burial." After referring to a contrivance, in the receiving houses of Frankfort and Munich,--a ring, attached to the finger of the corpse, and connected with a lightly hung bell, in the watcher's room--he significantly asks--"_Has the corpse bell at Frankfort and Munich ever yet been rung?_"--For my own part, I have no correspondence with the sextons there, and cannot tell. It may possibly have been rung, while the watcher slept! After admitting the possibility of premature burial, this writer says, he should be content with Shakspeare's test--"_This feather stirs; she lives_," This may be a very good affirmative test. But, as a negative test, it would be good for little--_this feather stirs not; she is dead_. In cases of catalepsy, it often happens, that a feather will not stir; and even the more trustworthy test--the mirror--will furnish no evidence of life.