Traditional Irish Revenant Songs with Elizabeth Healy

In this conversation, Elizabeth discusses her deep connection to Irish music, particularly revenant songs, which explore themes of death, grief, and resilience. She shares personal experiences with death and how they shaped her understanding of life and loss. The discussion highlights the importance of community in the grieving process and the therapeutic role of traditional songs in coping with grief. Elizabeth also reflects on her journey as a singer and the significance of music in her life, emphasizing the interconnectedness of life and death.

Elizabeth joined us all the way from Westport on the west coast of Ireland, for this episode!

Recently, Elizabeth developed a fascination with an important, though largely unexplored aspect of Irish musical and cultural heritage: the genre of traditional songs known as Revenant Songs. These songs, deeply rooted in Irish and international folklore, narrate tales of the dead returning, mostly in their full human form, to resolve unfinished earthly matters. 

Here are links to two of the songs, as examples

1) The Unquiet Grave, sung by Luke Kelly

      Luke Kelly: The Unquiet Grave  

2) The Wife of Usher's Well, sung by Karine Polwart

        The Wife Of Usher's Well by Karine Polwart

Book - My Father’s Wake: How the Irish Teach us to Live, Love, and Die by Kevin Toolis

The Keening Festival in Mulranny, about an hour's drive north of Westport, Ireland.
 

Transcript

Rev Wakil David (00:08.4)
Welcome everybody. We are very excited today to welcome Elizabeth Healy, all the way from Westport on the West Coast of Ireland for this episode. She's been singing for as long as she can remember. Her wide range of musical instruments, I'm sorry, her wide range of musical interests includes traditional and folk music, as well as jazz, Americana and French chansons. Recently, Elizabeth developed a fascination with an important

though largely unexplored aspect of Irish music and cultural heritage, the genre of traditional songs known as revenant songs. These songs, deeply rooted in Irish and international folklore, narrate tales of the dead returning, mostly in their full human form, to resolve unfinished earthly matters. Wow, that's important.

Annalouiza (01:00.756)
So cool, yes. Elizabeth also holds a medical license and is also a mediator. And after a considerable amount of research, she developed a presentation and workshop in which she discusses the features and cultural significance of the songs, their original role in death and mourning, as well as their potential current value in addressing a present day theme of grief, loss, and resilience.

Elizabeth (01:01.048)
Thanks.

Annalouiza (01:28.416)
Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us today. We're so happy that you're here.

Elizabeth (01:30.788)
It's absolutely my pleasure, Anelise and Joachim, I'm delighted to be here and thank you for the invitation to take part in this very interesting conversations.

Rev Wakil David (01:40.016)
Yeah. Yeah. More and more every day. We're always amazed. So, so really glad to have you. And we want to hear a lot more about Revenant Songs. We like to begin each of our podcasts asking people when they first became aware of death.

Annalouiza (01:42.56)
Yes.

Elizabeth (01:46.968)
That's great, yeah.

Elizabeth (02:00.132)
Well, I was thinking about that and I think, you know, it comes on me, it came on me gradually, I presume as it does a lot of other people. I think probably my first thing was maybe in school with the Catholic catechism and the biblical thing of, I was read as Catholic, of Jesus dying on the cross and Lazarus being brought back from the dead and was Abraham who was supposed to kill his own son.

Annalouiza (02:28.75)
Lots of death.

Rev Wakil David (02:28.944)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (02:31.063)
That was the start of my demise, I'm afraid. And then on holidays, we went on holidays for a month every year to a place north of Dublin, and another youngster who arrived from another country, I won't say where, used to kill frogs and pull off their legs. So that was really shocking. Really, really shocking.

Rev Wakil David (02:34.594)
You

Rev Wakil David (02:54.328)
yeah.

Elizabeth (02:57.388)
We decided not to play with him anymore. And then gradually, as a teenager, my, in terms of my grandparents, my grandfather died and I still can see my mother coming back, the whole door, opening it for her and she said, well, poor old dad is gone. That was the extent of my involvement in his last illness and death. So then in my,

Rev Wakil David (02:59.792)
You

Elizabeth (03:27.812)
As a family, we, well, my parents, suppose, weren't interested. They were city kind of people and fairly well off, for a while. And they had no time for the rituals around death in Ireland where people go to a removal, what they call removals, and queue up in the church or the funeral parlour to say, sorry for your troubles, I'm sorry for your loss. And there can be hundreds.

If you're the bereaved you're shaking hands and you're shaking hands and there's a dizziness of people goes by. So that was all, to my mother anyway, was all nonsense. She was very cynical about it. That was just people wanting to be noticed and to want to be seen. Oh, I was at that funeral. It huge funeral. it was awful about them. So I didn't see much about death. And then I qualified as a doctor. And I, in my first week,

Annalouiza (04:11.702)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (04:16.112)
Mm-hmm

Elizabeth (04:26.734)
first three days I think I was allocated to take close care of a young woman, 34 year old woman, mother of three, now mother of four, she had just given birth to her fourth child who was dying of breast cancer and the reason she was dying basically was because treatment, this is 40 years ago now, because treatment had been refused until she gave birth. So those four children now had no mother.

Annalouiza (04:48.812)
Hmm.

Elizabeth (04:55.108)
So that made me think quite deeply as well about a lot of things. But her death was beautiful for one moment. And then somebody accidentally, utterly accidentally, called the resuscitation team. So for an hour and a half, they were working on somebody who could not be resuscitated. And it took a long time before they stopped and a long time before the room could be made ready for the husband to come in.

He had been coming just before she died. He was on his way into the hospital. He was on his way up the stairs and she died. And then suddenly all hell broke loose. And I swore at that time that is not the way I want medicine to be. It was an accident. I know that. It was somebody very inexperienced who pressed the button. But I was to go down to her post-mortem afterwards and I said, no, I can't go down to that post-mortem. I won't be able to talk.

Rev Wakil David (05:31.088)
you

Annalouiza (05:31.182)
Thank you.

Annalouiza (05:45.122)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (05:53.892)
to that husband having been at the post-mortem and seen parts of her body taken out and I just said, no, I'll never go to a post-mortem again and I never want to see a death like that. And as a student, just before that, I had a couple of strange experiences, one of which was actually in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And as a student, I went for the summer.

Rev Wakil David (05:55.523)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (06:16.452)
Hm.

Elizabeth (06:19.722)
And one Sunday, Saturday, one Saturday I woke up feeling strange. Stomach, something wrong with my stomach but I couldn't decide. I wasn't sick, wasn't nauseated, I wasn't anything. But just something was wrong. And my friends kept asking me, what is wrong? I said, I don't know, I don't know. I just don't know. And eventually I kind of thought, okay, the nearest I can get is that I haven't had anybody.

Annalouiza (06:38.06)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (06:38.586)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (06:47.614)
die on me. don't, you know, I haven't had a death, close death. I wasn't thinking of my grandfather because I had no association with his death really. But it feels kind of as if it might have somebody had died. So I was kind of expecting a phone call all weekend, but it never came. And I thought, well, I'm still feeling this on Monday. Sunday was awful. And Monday was bad, but Tuesday was better.

Rev Wakil David (07:00.217)
Hmm

Elizabeth (07:16.492)
And on Tuesday night my mother phoned and said I didn't want to disturb you over the weekend because you might want to come back for the funeral but your grandmother died on Saturday night Sunday morning.

Rev Wakil David (07:27.044)
Huh. Huh.

Elizabeth (07:28.836)
So I realized I was closer to my grandmother than I had imagined. And I've had one or two other strange experiences like that. Two aren't related to death, but one is. I don't know if you want me to go into it now. Yeah.

Annalouiza (07:33.454)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (07:45.806)
Well, let me just say this as you're telling us these stories, death has been a very constant in your formative years and your young educational life. How has death impacted the story of who you've become? So if that's a way to bring your story into that.

Elizabeth (08:04.992)
Yeah, think I began, as I said, about Abraham being asked to kill his only son. I no, I'm not having that. I don't buy that. And I suppose that's where I began to learn about child abuse or adult abuse, because I thought that was very abusive. No kind God would actually or should actually do that to anybody. so I think I developed a sense of maybe science had something to do with it as well, the science of medicine or doing physics and chemistry.

Rev Wakil David (08:12.89)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (08:22.796)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (08:34.804)
And this is very basic stuff, it's not very deeply philosophically worked out. I thought, well, we're warm, we have a certain temperature. You know, we are warm beings and then we go cold. And we had learned in science that energy does not disappear, it just changes and goes somewhere else. So I began to think, well, I can cope with energy going somewhere else. know, transforming and becoming something else.

And I began to develop maybe a Gaia-like thing, but I'm not even that sure of that, of a connectedness between the past and the people who've gone before and the people who are coming ahead. And that connectedness, I suppose if I can just tell that other story, which is about connectedness in death. I brought my friends who live in Germany, I brought them to a particular place in North Mayo, which is one of the oldest and

most extensive pastoral developments, if you like, of the Stone Age, think. Neolithic, I think, Neolithic, yeah. And in that there are stone walls which have been in areas covered by soil and in other areas the soil has eroded. So you can see some of these stone walls visibly in one place, but they're 14 feet down.

in another place. They bring you up, they give you a kind of a crowbar if you like, a T-bar to hold and to go down and go bang bang on the top of the stones. And it's a 14 foot pole, so you go bang bang on the top of the stones. And I wasn't going to do it, and I said oh look, just do it, go along with it, do it. And as I did, as I put it down, as I touched the stone, there was an energy came right through the whole of my body.

Annalouiza (10:01.496)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (10:20.098)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (10:28.59)
Mm.

Elizabeth (10:28.9)
go past me. wasn't a wind that went past me. It was a huge cloud of energy almost, a force of energy that came right through me, nearly threw me off where I was standing. I nearly fell and I said, don't fall. Don't fall. You'll have to tell people what's just happened. And I didn't want to. And I've only just recently started telling people that this has happened. And it was such a rush, if you like, a whoosh.

Rev Wakil David (10:36.304)
Mmm.

Annalouiza (10:36.43)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (10:42.958)
you

Rev Wakil David (10:45.232)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (10:45.72)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (10:50.454)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (10:57.838)
completely filled me, seemed to blow me out and then was gone from my head. And the only way I could describe that was that something or some energy or somebody from 7,000 or 8,000 years ago chose me to come out. So that's the only way I can explain it. And there is no scientific explanation for that at all. So that...

Annalouiza (11:00.578)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (11:14.126)
Mm.

Rev Wakil David (11:14.192)
Wow.

Annalouiza (11:18.157)
Wow.

Annalouiza (11:22.082)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (11:22.202)
Yeah, yeah.

Elizabeth (11:26.5)
that relationship with death I suppose as a medic you are very much connected to death and you either seal yourself from it and become hard or you learn to work it into your you integrate it into yourself and recognize that that is part of life. think Ivan Illich, I don't know if you know remember Ivan Illich who wrote Medical Neurosis, he talked about how

Annalouiza (11:32.556)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (11:55.274)
inevitable death was and how doctors are expected to be God and how they become to believe they are God because they are expected to be God and therefore they have to be God but they don't. It's okay to say I can't cure you, you will die. So without realizing it I think I was developing a formulating something in myself about death which was about some form of acceptance in the cycle of life.

Annalouiza (12:00.366)
you

Annalouiza (12:05.89)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (12:08.504)
Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (12:17.506)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (12:24.46)
I'm not sure I'm going to be very happy to die myself. But I also, when I qualified after that job, a couple of other jobs, I moved to England, spent a couple of years there, came back to Ireland, to the west coast of Ireland, to where I am, Westbourne Castle Bar. didn't know where they were almost when I came back. And I began to see a very different approach to death and dying.

Rev Wakil David (12:54.192)
Mmm.

Elizabeth (12:54.544)
A colleague's father died and we all went to the church. Everybody said, you're coming now, the removal church five, or whatever time, and I went along with them. didn't know really many of them, I didn't know his father. But there was at least a thousand people in a fairly medium-sized church in a small town. I just went on for hours. And I began to see, no, this isn't a cynical thing. People mean this. This is important.

Annalouiza (13:08.258)
Wow.

Annalouiza (13:19.394)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (13:20.933)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (13:23.404)
And then my then husband's mother died and I went to her removal and funeral and afterwards and I was again struck at a small bungalow in a small rural town, hardly a town, and the whole community came in. They brought ham, the size of ham.

Rev Wakil David (13:49.732)
Wow, yeah.

Elizabeth (13:53.174)
sandwiches, roast chicken, apple tarts, rhubarb tarts, cake, fruit cake, sausages, they brought glasses, plates, knives and forks. And it was very much a community experience. It's your turn this time, but we are with you and we share your grief and we share the experience of grief with you.

Rev Wakil David (13:59.514)
Haha.

Rev Wakil David (14:06.576)
Mm.

Annalouiza (14:11.202)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm.

Rev Wakil David (14:17.86)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (14:20.15)
And I found this is very different. This is the way it should be. This is much more wholesome and warm and loving and actually accepting. Instead of this running away from death, my mother would always have said, you know, house private. They should have put house private. They shouldn't have people coming. And I disagree fundamentally with that. So the house should be open and

Annalouiza (14:20.29)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (14:20.41)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (14:23.926)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (14:24.079)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (14:41.36)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (14:45.484)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (14:45.829)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (14:50.304)
You know, I mentioned it before, there's a book called My Father's Wake, and I think I've given Kale the link, and it describes his father's death and this Kevin Toulis, who's from Ackler, just north of here, but lived away for a long time, and the rituals, the different rituals of the wake. And as he said, if you watch some old films,

Annalouiza (15:06.466)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (15:17.166)
Some movies they will have everybody getting absolutely scuttled and drunk and it's all the wake is just about drinking. It's not. People will have a drink. Some people might get drunk but the point of the wake is not to get drunk. The point of a wake is to sit with the family and be with them. To remember the person, to talk about them. Not to say, don't talk about them now. No, no, no, you can't really. It'll upset the family. You do, talk to Remember the time he did that and she did the other and...

Annalouiza (15:24.604)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (15:32.846)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (15:33.434)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (15:35.694)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (15:39.354)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (15:44.44)
God, was an awful woman for something or other. She never left off. And you could give out about the person and you can kind of praise the person. I mean, in Mayo, there's a community radio, which I think it's three times a day. It might have reduced now, I don't know. But it actually spends 10 minutes listing out. There'll be music and then a bit of news. then the death has been announced of Elizabeth Healy from...

Rev Wakil David (15:44.473)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (15:46.296)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (15:51.726)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (16:11.781)
Hmm.

Elizabeth (16:13.656)
Caraholly in Westport. She died peacefully at home and blah blah blah blah blah. Removal were 5 o'clock from St. Angela's Church to a funeral in her hometown of Wexford or whatever on Tuesday morning. And then there'll be a little break in them. And the death has been announced of Wacky David Matthews, excuse me, and of such and such a townland, of such and such a village.

Rev Wakil David (16:15.492)
Wow.

Annalouiza (16:19.031)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (16:31.8)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (16:36.819)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (16:40.046)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (16:40.74)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elizabeth (16:41.656)
who died peacefully at home or died whatever and they will go through further removal is and people listen to that and people something I don't do enough here I don't go to removals and funerals enough as part of the community and that's because I'm I still haven't quite got that but it's a very much more clue and and and Kevin Toulis talks about in the city you don't hear people listening to the radio to hear who's died number one in the city you couldn't get through all the dead

Annalouiza (16:45.708)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (16:53.272)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (16:53.378)
Mm. Yeah.

Annalouiza (17:08.291)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (17:08.516)
That's right.

Right.

Annalouiza (17:11.384)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (17:11.456)
in a day. And you don't see people sitting around the house, you don't see them then coming back the next morning, you don't see them sitting around, sitting beside the dead body overnight. You don't see them coming to shake the hand, even though they didn't really know that person, but they were connected in some way. And also he talks about, don't see people standing outside a house, waiting for the coffin to come out and be placed on two chairs. And then it's lifted

Annalouiza (17:18.498)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (17:24.034)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (17:24.186)
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (17:31.682)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (17:41.664)
into the curse and the chairs are kicked from under the coffin which is a rupture a signal a symbol of the rupture between life and death to allow and this is where it is kind of contrasts a little bit with the revenant songs which i'll get on to maybe now but it's it's to give the dead person freedom to go and so that it's breaking the link so you don't have to come back and please don't come back

Annalouiza (17:46.862)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (17:46.884)
Huh. Wow.

Annalouiza (17:51.714)
Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm.

Rev Wakil David (17:52.768)
yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David (18:05.722)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (18:10.392)
because you're not, please don't come back to me. No, no, it's just, this is the end. This is the end. And I haven't seen that done myself.

Rev Wakil David (18:10.393)
Hahaha.

Annalouiza (18:10.478)
There's nowhere to sit.

Rev Wakil David (18:17.616)
Yeah, that's great. That's great. I love that. Yeah, I really appreciate the look into the cultures that we, that's part of what we like to do in this podcast is get a better look into cultures that aren't here or have been lost or whatever. And I appreciate that very much. When we spoke earlier, you told us about, also about your extensive work as a singer, doctor, and mediator.

Maybe you could share a little bit more of your story before this and then tell us how that led to this current passion you have for revenant songs and talk about what those are and what those mean to you.

Elizabeth (18:52.964)
Yeah, I think there's a tenuous link in a way between my work and these songs and the singing. As I said, I've sung for a long time, but there was a long break. And when I came back to Westport, I began to sing again. But my work was as a medic, hospital work. I didn't like the hospital hierarchies where the doctor was always on top and the top decision makers and actually told physiotherapists what to do and told social workers what to do.

sorry but they're the trained ones, you're not trained in physiotherapy or social work or psychology. So I wanted something more egalitarian, more holistic and I moved to England for two years to work in what's called Child Health. While it was not very connected but it was multidisciplinary work and it was much more preventive and I felt it in the whole person and the whole family and the whole social circumstances.

And then I came back. I loved working in England, but I missed living in Ireland. So if I could work in England and live in Ireland, that'd be perfect. But you can't do that. Some people do. But so I came back and had a slightly different job. It was more public health job, but gradually it evolved into child health. And I was given responsibility for

Rev Wakil David (19:51.802)
Wow.

Elizabeth (20:16.836)
the management of physical cases, conferences in relation to management of physical abuse of children. And then gradually in the late 80s, early 90s, the question of sexual abuse emerged, if you like, through disclosures, concerns, worries, indicators. We know nothing about this. So with a number of others, with a couple of psychologists, a couple of social workers,

Rev Wakil David (20:25.135)
Mm.

Elizabeth (20:46.116)
a nurse and a policeman, a policewoman, band guard, what we would call at the time a band guard, the guard of Siacón, the police and a band guard is a women guard, they're all guards now. But we included, it was the first community-based, multidisciplinary, inter-agency team developed to deal with allegations or concerns of child sexual abuse. And that worked really well. I developed protocols in that team.

Rev Wakil David (20:58.298)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David (21:10.736)
Well.

Elizabeth (21:16.052)
To number one, make sure we didn't further abuse the child. And so we interviewed them immediately and within 24, 48 hours. And that we did nothing to interfere with the judicial process or court criminal case. Because at the time, there was a lot of people actually doing it wrong. Because by the time they got to the court, they were told, oh, but that was a leading question, doctor, wasn't it? That was a leading question, social worker, wasn't it? So you led them to believe this.

Rev Wakil David (21:20.314)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (21:45.86)
So we very strictly kept very open questions which weren't leading and we had very strong structures. So then for various reasons I moved to Cork. I did three years psychiatry and worked for a while as a registrar in child psychiatry and then came back to the West in Galway, the city of Galway just 160 kilometres south of here.

Elizabeth (22:14.37)
was moved fairly quickly into a similar job as I had had before in the child abuse work. so within a short time, I was asked to chair an investigation into allegations by an adult of sexual abuse as a child when in an institution, the staff member of which was currently and then involved with children. So, yeah, sure.

Annalouiza (22:40.43)
I'm going to interrupt you for a moment. I think that for the sake of time, if you could just move all the way to the beginnings of the singing, which is really kind of.

Rev Wakil David (22:49.648)
Thanks.

Elizabeth (22:49.664)
Right, yeah. Okay, sure, which is much more relevant. Anyway, so I did that for 10 years. I took early retirement and then I came to live in Westport and I began singing again, basically. I sang locally and did a number of different groups and five-piece a cappella women's group, three-piece jazz group, various others.

But then when COVID came, there were a lot of online traditional singing sessions. And I attended one or two of those a night, and it kept me sane. So that introduced me to people and songs and introduced me to the singing in a very different way than I had been before. And then after COVID, I decided not to do it. The mediation work was different. I just retrained as a mediator after early retirement and then stopped doing that.

Rev Wakil David (23:27.952)
Hmm.

Elizabeth (23:46.724)
So I've focused much more since the end of COVID on the singing and other creative interests and outlets. So during COVID, I heard two songs, well, no, one song which was called The Wife of Usher as well, which talked about, and this is one of the songs I've given a link for, which talks about the rage.

the raging grief of a mother who sent her sons away and within a month they were dead from a plague of some sort. Some of the songs, there's an American version called The Three Babes and I think they went away to get education or she sent them away to see, I can't remember. So different songs can be very different but in this one she sent them away and they died of plague. They died of an illness and her rage and they come back.

Rev Wakil David (24:21.022)
Mm. Mm.

Annalouiza (24:33.806)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (24:44.404)
And they partly, well they do give out to her for her excessive crying because, and this is one of the things, excessive crying in those days was considered to inhibit the passage of the dead into whatever lies ahead. And that is a belief that goes back hundreds of years and it's present in India and in Denmark I think as well, and other countries I'm trying to research that. There are folk tales about that and there are myths about that.

Rev Wakil David (24:58.606)
Mmm.

Elizabeth (25:14.572)
in India and Greece and other places. I haven't found any songs yet but I'm working on that. So they complain that she wets the winding sheet and the winding sheet is the shroud which the body is wrapped in and if you wet that sheet obviously it becomes heavy and it holds the body down and so it can't escape into the afterlife.

Rev Wakil David (25:20.304)
Thanks.

Rev Wakil David (25:30.562)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (25:37.536)
Mm. Wow.

Annalouiza (25:39.374)
Oh, but let me ask you this. Isn't there also a practice of the criers or people who come into? Yes. Is it? Okay.

Elizabeth (25:48.088)
There's keening. Keening is very different. Yes, keening. In fact, it's almost a specialist area. I've been to a couple of conferences on keening, I wouldn't be knowledgeable about that. Dr. Mary Mc... It's not crying. It's not crying. Yeah, yeah, it's not crying. It is a singing form of keening and of expressing grief and of...

Rev Wakil David (25:51.152)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David (25:56.112)
Hmm.

Annalouiza (25:56.374)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Annalouiza (26:03.98)
Okay, but it isn't crying. It's a different thing, okay?

Rev Wakil David (26:09.273)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (26:18.092)
of bringing out grief in the listeners so that it enables them to grieve.

Rev Wakil David (26:21.242)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (26:21.718)
Yes, that's right. Right, right. It normalizes the grief that can come out and it helps them to like join them in that. Okay.

Rev Wakil David (26:25.689)
Yeah, good.

Elizabeth (26:31.178)
Exactly. And very largely it's a woman's activity, although some men have been known. Again, it's not my specialty, I don't know very much about it. But there are still cultures wherein keening is still carried out, and the women do the keening. And there are other cultures where the male can express their grief much more than we allow anybody in the West.

Rev Wakil David (26:50.352)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (26:50.606)
Okay.

Rev Wakil David (26:58.041)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (26:59.404)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (27:00.548)
Yeah, yeah, that's so we've had we've had podcasts about that one. Yeah.

Elizabeth (27:00.772)
So the other thing is then I noted that song and it moved me very deeply. And then in a pub called the Cobblestone Inn in Dublin where there's a regular singing, very good singing traditional sessions, they're very committed to traditional music, I was sitting at the end of an L-shaped bar.

And it's really amazing to see 70 people all listening, sitting, listening to one person sing and one other person sings unaccompanied and then one other person sings and everybody listens. It's a class, a master class in listening, really. But I heard this disembodied voice. I couldn't see the person who was singing around the corner of the bar.

Rev Wakil David (27:36.463)
Wow.

Rev Wakil David (27:48.144)
Haha.

Elizabeth (27:56.75)
But this beautifully clear voice came across to me singing a wonderful air, talking about a disembodied voice from the grave. I inquired the name of the song and it was called The Unquiet Grave and I was told, that's one of the Revenant songs. I hadn't known that there were such things as Revenant songs. So that's, I connected that then to the wife, the first song I had heard with the

Rev Wakil David (28:08.261)
Hmm.

Elizabeth (28:26.116)
three boys who died and I began to see a link and I also heard from a friend how he had depended and leaned on the Unquiet Grave for solace after the death of a very close relative. So that was, I realised gosh people, these are very old songs. Yeah, people are...

this person and one or two others I talked to about it said, yes, there's solace in these songs. I realized even though they may be from the 14th century or the 16th or 18th century, that even as they stand, they were providing support and solace to people now. So I thought I would look into them. I mean, those two songs are the particular two that I heard first.

Rev Wakil David (29:01.317)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (29:12.096)
Right.

Elizabeth (29:23.81)
The wife of us as well, the wife at us as well, or the wife of us as well, particularly struck me as well because I heard it during one of the early lockdowns.

Rev Wakil David (29:33.968)
Mm.

Elizabeth (29:35.594)
And it's about death. The song is... They were gone a month for her. When death came over the land and stole her boys away. And I thought, this is a time when death is coming over the land and taking people away. So it struck really deeply. And the Unquiet Grave is very different in that it's a more gentle song.

Annalouiza (29:52.322)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (29:57.88)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (30:04.622)
The Wife of Usher as well is quite an angry song. She curses the wind and the waves and the fish. Poor old fish have nothing to do with the sun's death. They get the stick, they get the projection. They get the anger. And then they come back. But then they go again. And then she curses the wind and the waves again and the fish. So she's not, what's word, resolved. She's not assuaged. In other words, she's not comforted.

Rev Wakil David (30:10.564)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David (30:17.902)
Yeah.

Elizabeth (30:34.296)
by their visit. Whereas in the Unquiet Grave, depends, some people are saying the woman has died and the man is bereaved or the other way around. I sing where the woman has died and the man is bereaved. I've heard it from Luke Kelly and the wife of us as well, heard from Carrie and Polwar, a Scottish singer. So she comes back in the Unquiet Grave, she comes back and she gently chides him for sitting on her grave for a year.

Annalouiza (30:45.667)
Mm.

Elizabeth (31:03.556)
because you're sitting on my grave, can't sleep. And he says, but I want you back, I want you back, I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you just once. She said, well, if you kiss me, you'll die. And he said, don't care, I don't care, I just want to kiss you. And she says, look at the green grass of the fields and look at the flowers. And even the most beautiful flowers will die. So try and make yourself content until death calls you away.

Rev Wakil David (31:07.297)
Mm-hmm

Rev Wakil David (31:23.588)
Listen.

Rev Wakil David (31:29.466)
Peace.

Elizabeth (31:33.508)
So it's a gentle chastising and it's also then she turns and becomes more gentle and more comforting to him and gives him the freedom to go and live his life and maybe find another love. So I was looking into these and there are two different groups. I won't go into the details but the bigger group I have 43 songs gathered. I haven't collected them in the sense that they're not unknown that I have found somewhere.

Rev Wakil David (31:57.584)
Hmm.

Elizabeth (32:02.05)
but I have gathered them together and about 34 of them are of one group and where there is a conversation between the dead and the bereaved and it's about death and grief and loss and living after loss. The other group is more where the supernatural element is merely present to heighten the drama but it's more about a spooky murder.

Rev Wakil David (32:14.64)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (32:30.744)
So it's very different. they're all, if you look at the function of song and the function of music, the function of song, there are various different functions. But in the three kind of that you'd look at for revenant songs, it's about expecting grief. It's about cultural values and about the relationship between the living and the dead. And in Ireland, there's still,

Rev Wakil David (32:54.628)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (32:59.364)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (33:00.408)
quite a strong sense that the dead are not totally gone, that they are around somewhere and that you can talk to them. And that they need you almost as much as you need them because they need you to let them go as well. And that's one of the themes of these songs. Well, know, please stop, it's kind of baby stop crying. Well, Dylan, know, baby stop crying. But it is baby stop crying so that I can actually move.

Rev Wakil David (33:13.732)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David (33:24.016)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (33:29.23)
to the next phase. it's also, please stop crying because it's hurting you, yourself, the bereaved. And you need to move on and you need to live your life while you are alive. So there's a lot, and basically there were, the people who wrote songs in the 19th century Ireland and elsewhere, I'm sure, were more song-

Annalouiza (33:30.53)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (33:31.083)
beautiful.

Rev Wakil David (33:37.05)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (33:44.592)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (33:58.852)
They wrote song poems. They poems adapted to song and they weren't just a song. They were embedded in their community and so the song that they would compose would relate to what has gone on in the community and so that everybody could relate to what he was talking about, the harvest or the bog or whatever.

Rev Wakil David (34:02.543)
Okay.

Rev Wakil David (34:20.206)
Okay.

Elizabeth (34:26.692)
And Irish people at the time, particularly where Irish was spoken, just sang everywhere. On the road, on the bog, in the kitchen, if they had a kitchen. And it was time of extreme poverty and the experience of famine was still very much alive for them. the song was very important and in these songs they acted. There were no counsellors, no therapists, no self-help books, no support groups.

Rev Wakil David (34:26.96)
You

Rev Wakil David (34:36.293)
Hmm.

Elizabeth (34:56.536)
So they actually acted as counselling, as bereavement counselling, if you like, to enable people to accept death and to, I hate the word after the phrase move on, but to actually accept and to continue to live their life as they should and to gain from life still rather than to be caught by the grief forever.

Rev Wakil David (35:04.568)
Yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David (35:15.524)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, good,

grief. yeah. Great, thank you. Go ahead, Adelisa.

Annalouiza (35:31.362)
Well, I was just going to ask her about how, first of all, one of our questions is how do you keep yourself resourced in this work that you do? And how often do you go out to sing?

Elizabeth (35:44.676)
I haven't been out for a few weeks now because I've actually been quite sick. But I try and sing, try and go and it depends. It depends. I sang, as I said, during COVID I sang every night. I still attend two or three. There's one on tomorrow night online and there's one on a Saturday and a Wednesday and a Tuesday that I attend most times. Although in the summer it's harder because there are other things happening.

And there's a couple of places in Westport where you can go and there are more music sessions but they will happily hear a song. There's mat and malays and there's cobblers and there's beginnings. There's a number of places. And so I sing quite often. I have delivered the workshop that I developed. I broke my shoulder last September.

early in September and I had to present this workshop for the first time in Westport in October. So I sat frozen with my shoulder in extreme pain copying and pasting the work I had done onto one document and getting it ready. So I delivered it twice live before Christmas and I delivered it also to the Spring Harmony online festival, the San Francisco based

Singing weekend, music weekend, and I also delivered it to BalladZoom, which is another online session. And I have been honoured just recently by being invited to and being booked to sing at what's called the Frank Hart Festival. Frank Hart was a man who collected songs mostly around Dublin and he died, I think, 20, 30 years ago. And there's a festival organised around him and his work.

in late September by a weekly singing session in Dublin, which I haven't got to for a while because I'm living on the West Coast. And they organized the Frank Hart Festival and I have been asked to deliver it on the Saturday afternoon. So that's really good. Yeah, so I'm doing as much singing as I can. I'm trying to get back to some jazz singing as well. But...

Rev Wakil David (38:00.234)
Nice, Yeah.

Elizabeth (38:08.758)
And I sing in a choir. I also sing in a standard choir called Choir Weillot, the Mayo Choir. But it's actually quite a high standard choir and it's very enjoyable. We're performing in the Lucier Mass at the end of September in Clifton in Connemara in Galway. So I'm looking forward to that. It's difficult. It's brief, but it's difficult and it's very high.

Rev Wakil David (38:21.264)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (38:21.432)
What?

Annalouiza (38:31.649)
Lovely.

Rev Wakil David (38:37.847)
Hahaha.

Elizabeth (38:38.308)
I'm not singing up here! So that's good. So yeah, try and sing as often as I can, basically. And how do I resource myself? I actually find these songs quite therapeutic myself, independent of death and issues around death. I think they're beautiful songs. And having researched them, I have a greater understanding of them. I like them before, but now I really have a deeper...

Annalouiza (38:57.326)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (39:07.542)
appreciation of them and of the other songs that I'm getting to know and learning I have another 40 to go, no have another 35 to go, I'm beginning to see the depth in them really. I find it, mean having burnt out in the work I was doing and as I said the work with the clients was fine. It's the organizational and societal and shadow dynamics

Rev Wakil David (39:21.456)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (39:37.796)
that come into play, are the difficult things, you know, that can be the difficult thing. So that's, I almost resort myself by singing. I also resort myself by cycling. I'm a bit of a cyclist. so that, I like to get out on a bike in the fresh air and I swim every week. In the cold waters, by the way, I can go out, I can go out, the weather is...

Rev Wakil David (39:37.848)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (39:43.896)
So.

Rev Wakil David (39:47.523)
Good, that makes sense.

Annalouiza (39:47.608)
That's good.

Rev Wakil David (39:52.706)
Okay.

Rev Wakil David (39:59.792)
Okay.

Annalouiza (40:00.087)
Love it.

Rev Wakil David (40:02.316)
good for you.

Elizabeth (40:06.614)
minus two and go into a very very cold sea for five minutes. I don't do the minor swim or anything like that but those those two things the cycling and the swimming are very re-energizing and supportive.

Annalouiza (40:09.858)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (40:09.986)
yeah.

Haha great.

Annalouiza (40:19.618)
Good. Lovely.

Rev Wakil David (40:19.76)
And singing makes total sense in this respect. Well, you know, I'll look forward to some of the links. If you can send links, by the way, that we'll put in a podcast notes to some of those online events that people could maybe attend, that would be great. So we're getting close to our time. And I just wanted to check and see if there's anything that we didn't ask you about that you wish we had. And then we'd like to have you read the poem that you sent us as well.

Elizabeth (40:23.925)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (40:34.446)
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth (40:34.498)
Okay, okay.

Elizabeth (40:43.94)
yes. yes. I can't think of anything that I would have liked you to ask me. I would probably think of something ten minutes after I've left you. But, but I, yeah, I can't think of anything now. No, I can't think of anything now. think that, I think the questions were very open and as always I fill the space.

Rev Wakil David (40:56.144)
That's all good.

Rev Wakil David (41:08.656)
Thank you.

Yeah, enjoyable. All right.

Elizabeth (41:13.572)
The only thing about the online sessions is most of them are fairly closed. They're not international. They might be international, they're singers from Oregon and South Francisco and Chicago and France and Brittany and other places. But it wouldn't be a fully public thing. If I come across a fully public thing, then I will send you.

Rev Wakil David (41:21.347)
Okay, okay.

Annalouiza (41:22.126)
Mm.

Rev Wakil David (41:37.04)
Okay, okay.

Rev Wakil David (41:41.048)
Yeah, please do. Or even something people could listen to. That'd be great. OK. Do you want to read this poem or do want us to do it? Yeah.

Elizabeth (41:42.692)
Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, lovely. Okay. It's quite short and it's Late Fragment by Raymond Carver. And before I do, can I just thank you very much for inviting me. I've really enjoyed the conversation. I've really enjoyed meeting you both and it's been a very interesting time. And it's a wonderful podcast talking about issues that aren't generally brought to the forefront.

Rev Wakil David (42:10.891)
Thank you.

Annalouiza (42:14.446)
Discussed? Yeah.

Elizabeth (42:15.586)
Yeah, discussed. Yes, so well done. So now... Late Fragment by Raymond Carver.

Rev Wakil David (42:15.78)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you.

Elizabeth (42:26.882)
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved? To feel myself beloved on this earth?

Rev Wakil David (42:48.336)
Beautiful. Call myself beloved. Yeah. Remember who I think we were talking about that earlier. The first thing you first forgiveness comes for yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I'm going to stop the recording. We stopped the recording when we hang out a bit. Make sure it all.

Elizabeth (42:50.158)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (42:59.041)
Hahaha

Elizabeth (42:59.14)
Yes, yes, exactly, Indeed. Yes, lovely. My pleasure. Thank you.

Annalouiza (43:05.826)
Thank you so much. Yes.