Caoineadh os Cionn Coirp: The Lament for the Dead in Ireland

As poetry performed at crucial turning points in life, lamentation has been a central element of the culture of women in most societies. In Ireland the custom of public improvised poetic lamentation over deceased persons by women is attested from ancient times and persisted into the twentieth century in some parts. This paper gives a brief survey of the lament tradition in Ireland, taking into account evidence from diverse periods and sources, both literary and oral, as well as lament “texts” collected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A backdrop to attitudes to the lament in different sections of society expressed in the sources is provided by consideration of the linguistic, political and, especially, the socio-religious history of Ireland in late-medieval and modern times. In attempting to understand the significance of lamentation to the bereaved individual and community, the structure and content of the traditional lament over the dead, its situation in the scheme of the funeral ritual, its performance, and its effect on the audience are all considered. The pivotal role of the keening woman in this context is also taken into account.     

Hospitality at wakes and funerals in Ireland from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century: Some evidence from the written record

Several aspects of mortuary customs in Ireland have already been studied in detail. This paper focuses on the role of hospitality on the occasion of death from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Based on a variety of written records, it discusses the attitudes of both lay and clerical commentators—officials, travellers and writers on the one hand, and the clergy on the other—to the provision of hospitality, particularly before the interment of the corpse. The meaning of hospitality for the bereaved family, the community, and the deceased is also explored.     

More substance on subsistence

Bernard Nietschmann. Between Land and Water. New York: Seminar Press, 1973. xiv + 279 pp. Illustrations, tables, appendixes, glossary, references, and index. $14.00.

James Ward, producer‐editor, and Brian Weiss, anthropologist‐photographer. The Turtle People. Los Angeles: B & C Films. Twenty‐six minutes. Color and sound. $310.00 (purchase price), $25.00 (rental fee).     

The Interplay of Spirit in Greek Island Dancing

Values of honourable courtship are expressed in dance and this paper is an ethnographic reconstruction of a Greek island dance called the sousta practised on the Dodecanesian island of Rhodes during the interwar period (1925–1940). Its performance was a dynamic interplay of gender roles that mediated romance and moved the performers toward the resolution of marriage. The aim of the paper is to elaborate on values ascribed to men and women during the occasion of dancing at a village wedding in southern Rhodes. The interplay of grace (hari) and honour (timi) will locate why and how men reveal through hari and why women are concealed through timi during the dance performance.     

Inscribing the border: Schizophrenia and the aesthetics of Aztla´n

Late modernity is replete with new borders that defy traditional geographic notions of scale. The irruption of such transverse borders is seen by some as signalling a threatening loss of the link between place and identity. Yet others have viewed this as a productive decentring. The Chicano movement and the aesthetic production that arises from it illustrates this productivity. Chicano national identity is actively produced through the revisioning of space that both draws from and defies geopolitical borders. This challenges geographers and other border-based scholars to rethink the ways that borders manage late modern power.