“The lower order of Irish,” she returned, “entertain a kind of posthumous pride respecting their funerals; and from sentiments that I have heard them express, I really believe there are many among them who would prefer living neglected to the idea of dying unmourned, or unattended, by a host to their last home.” To my astonishment she then descended the bank, and, accompanied by the priest, mingled with the crowd. “This will surprise you,” said Glorvina; “but it is wise to comply with those prejudices which we cannot vanquish. And by those poor people it is not only reckoned a mark of great disrespect not to follow a funeral (met by chance) a few paces, but almost a species of impiety.” “And mankind, you know,” added the priest, “are always more punctilious with respect to ceremonials than fundamentals. However, _you should_ see an Irish Roman Catholic funeral; to a Protestant and a stranger it must be a spectacle of some interest. “With respect to the attendant ceremonies on death,” he continued, “I know of no country which the Irish at present resemble but the modern Greeks. In both countries when the deceased dies unmarried, the young attendants are chiefly dressed in white, carrying garlands, and strewing flowers as they proceed to the grave. Those old women who sing before the body are professional _improvisatori_; they are called _Caoiners_ or _Keeners_, from the _Canine_ or death song, and are _hired_ to celebrate the virtues of the deceased. Thus we find St. Chrysostom censuring the Greeks of his day, for the purchased lamentations and hireling mourners that attend their funerals. And so far back with us as in the days of druidical influence, we find it was part of the profession of the bards to perform the funeral ceremonies, to sing to their harps the virtues of the dead, and call on the living to emulate their deeds. * This you may remember as a custom frequently alluded to in the poems of Ossian. ** Pray observe that frantic woman who tears her hair And beats her bosom: ’tis the mother of the deceased. She is following her only child to an early grave; and did you understand the nature of her lamentations you would compare them to the complaints of the mother of Euriales, in the Æneid: the same passionate expressions of sorrow, and the same wild extravagance of grief. They even still most religiously preserve here that custom never lost among the Greeks, of washing the body before interment, and strewing it with flowers.”