Rain on Slate: The Atmosphere of an Irish Wake

A wake is the night the family keeps with the body before the funeral.

In the older Irish tradition, the body was laid out at home. The doors of the house were open. Neighbours came through, hours at a time, throughout the night. Food was offered. Drink was poured. The keening women came, if there were keening women left in the parish. People sat. People spoke. People said nothing.

The wake was long because the wake had to be long. The grief was not on a schedule. The night was the schedule.

This is a tradition older than the Catholic Church in Ireland, and it survived everything the Church and the state did to formalize it. The wake stayed in the house. It stayed at the body. It stayed long.

What you remember from a wake, if you have been to one, is the air.

The house holds a particular density during those hours. The number of people in the rooms changes — a wake has tide — but the air does not lighten. The presence of the body, the candles burning continuously, the food on the table, the rain or the dark or the wind outside, the smell of damp wool from coats hung in the hall. The air thickens. The hours stop moving at their usual rate.

This is what scent does in a room when it is doing its real work. It is not making the room smell pleasant. It is making the room a place where a different kind of time is allowed to pass.

A wake is one of the few places in modern life where this still happens by accident. A meditation room can do it. A monastery can do it. A wake does it because it has been doing it for centuries and it does not know any other way to be.

The atmosphere of a wake is not something we are trying to recreate. It would be presumptuous to suggest a candle could do what the long hours of a real wake do.

But the atmosphere of a wake is a useful reference point for what we are after. The density of air. The shift in how time passes. The room that is heavier than ordinary rooms. The presence of a held attention.

A candle, lit in a private room, makes a small private version of this. The flame is the focus. The scent is the density. The hour of the burn is the hour of held attention.

Lament is the candle in our line that is closest to wake-air. The late one. The hour that has shifted. Burn it with a window open in heavy rain, if you happen to have rain. The sound of the weather and the weight of the scent will combine into something that is not quite an atmosphere on purpose, but is in the family.

If you wanted to build a room that could carry this kind of attention, you would not need much.

A chair. A surface for the candle. A small light or no light at all. Something soft underfoot, because cold floors register more than people expect. A blanket nearby for the same reason.

What you would not need: music, decoration, anything that announces what the room is for. The room does not have to be styled. It has to be available.

The wake worked because the house was the house. The body was in the front room. The neighbours came as themselves. There was no production.

If you want a room in your house where this kind of attention can hold — for grief, for thought, for the hours that ask for more than ordinary time — keep it plain.

The candle is enough. The rain, if you have rain, is more than enough.

The slate will do the rest.