Leaba-Shiùbhal | The Travelling Bed
How Gaels Cared for the Dead and Dying
March 1, 2024
Host: Frances MacEachen
Guests: Jean MacNeil, Shamus MacDonald and Cassandra Yonder
In this final visit for Season 4 we entered into a rich conversation around Gaelic deathcare and customs.
Frances explained at the beginning of the evening that she had a personal connection with this topic as her grandmother, Mary Anne Cameron (Màiri Anna Iain Shandaidh) had been well-known in her community as someone who was skilled in caring for the bodies of people who had died. As Frances said, “While some people were really gifted in helping people enter the world, she was really gifted at helping them exit.”
Jean MacNeil (Jean Dan Rory Michael D) was born and raised in Red Point, Victoria County. She graduated from the Cape Breton Business College and worked at a bank, post office, hotels and in-home care, and even took one older person to live with her and her husband in their home. In 2000 she landed her self-described “best job I ever had,” at Baile nan Gàidheal (Nova Scotia Highland Village Museum), where she worked for 14 years as one of their most engaging and natural animators. She married Duncan MacNeil of Grass Cove in 1966 and became “Jean Duncan Jimmy John D.” Jean and Duncan raised two boys and have three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
(Photo courtesy of Baile nan Gàidheal | Nova Scotia Highland Village Museum)
Shamus Y MacDonald, PhD, is Stùiriche na Gàidhlig (Manager of Gaelic Language and Culture) at Baile nan Gàidheal | Nova Scotia Highland Village Museum. He is passionate about the stories, language, and history of Gaelic Nova Scotia and regularly visits tradition bearers in the region. He has researched and published papers on Gaelic death practices including With Respect to the Dead: Reconstructing an Historic View of Death in Gaelic Nova Scotia and "There was Rowdyism there, Boy" Exploring How Old-Time Wakes are Remembered in the Maritimes.
Shamus has an undergraduate degree in Celtic Studies from ST.F.X University, a Masters in Scottish Ethnology from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Folklore from Memorial University. After several years living and working in northern Canada, Shamus and his wife moved back home and are raising their two young boys in Antigonish.
Cassandra Yonder is a proud mother of four children (age 21, 16, 10 and 7) plus another who didn't live until birth. She is a homesteader in the forested highlands of Cape Breton, where she lives in a unique timber frame barn/house built by her beloved partner Kurt. Cassandra’s academic background includes a B.A. in Gerontology and Sociology, Master of Architecture, and a degree in Grief and Bereavement as well as certification in Hypnotherapy, Animal Assisted Therapy, and Home Funeral Guidance. She has been heavily involved with shaping the “Community Deathcaring” social movement since 2009 when she started the Facebook group and later the online school of the same name. She has served on the advisory boards of the National Home Funeral Alliance and Community Deathcare Canada in addition to the local community through the Hospice Society, Community Health Boards, and currently as a Municipal employee coordinating a Senior Safety Program.
There are four remote waterfalls within one hour’s walking distance from Cassandra’s front door, which she enjoys visiting alone, on horseback, or with her family and dogs. Over time, she hopes to become a grandmother, increasingly self-sufficient, and better at dressage. Cassandra believes in the transformational and potentially therapeutic value of reclaiming home-based, community-centred care of our own dying, dead and bereaved, and she seeks indigenous leadership in that regard.
What we heard
Mary Anne Cameron (Màiri Anna Iain Shandaidh)
The title of this session comes from Màiri Anna, as she described the leaba-shiùbhal or leabaidh-shiùbhla as the bed that many people both entered and left the world on. This “travelling bed” connects to one of the Gaelic words for dying: a’ siùbhal, which literally means “travelling.” You can say shiùbhail i | “she died,” or also the enigmatic chaochail e | “he changed”’ to say that someone has passed on. The literal bhàsaich iad | “they died” is often used only for animals.
Frances remembers looking through an album of photos her grandmother kept of loved ones lying in their caskets. The living people in the photos often had their hands resting gently on the bodies of the dead, demonstrating both a tenderness and an ease that people had with death. This theme recurred throughout the evening’s conversation as Frances and her guests reflected on how the close bonds of family and community―the intimacy of growing up and living around the same people all of one’s life, coupled with shared culture and customs―helped to foster a sense of comfort around all of life’s stages, including death. Echoing what Kate Beaton and Peter MacInnis said about humour in session four, this intimacy sometimes allowed for joking and pranks that were not disrespectful but rather strengthened and celebrated those bonds.
An taigh-faire | The wake-house
The Gaelic for wake is faire which means to watch, guard or keep vigil. At a wake, we watch over the dead and it was common practice among the Gaels to make sure the deceased was never alone until the funeral rites had been performed.
Frances asked all her guests what they remember as their first encounter with death. For Jean MacNeil (Jean Dan Rory Michael D) of Red Point, this was a detailed memory of attending a wake on April 21, 1949, aged six years old. Even as a young child she was curious and noticed details—the bread rolls her mother brought to contribute to the lunch, the bucket under the body of the deceased with a little earth in it. She explained that this was in case the fluids had not been fully released from the body, in the days before embalming was common practice. The experience of the wake didn’t seem to be in any way traumatic but rather accepted as a normal part of life: “That was a pretty good experience for us going over and seeing that.”
Jean described how the wake would usually last two or three days and there would be food and drink provided throughout that time: “When you’d go to the wake it was understood that everyone that went into the wake would have to have a cup of tea before they would leave even if they were trying to say ‘we just ate our supper’— no, it was almost like it was a custom, you had to do it.”
Frances’s next guest, Shamus, spoke to this topic as well, explaining that in some ways the deceased is viewed as the ‘host’ of the event, and people often saved money and made special provision in their wills to ensure their guests had a good time at their send-off (“this much rum should be served at my wake”). Shamus referenced the work of 20th-century folklorist Mary Fraser who recorded locals in Antigonish County, NS. The people she interviewed believed that every bite of food went toward lessening the amount of time the person had to spend in purgatory. As Shamus put it, “Refusing hospitality at a wake would be akin to refusing hospitality from the deceased themselves, it just wasn’t done.”
Jean explained how a candle would be lit by the casket and would stay there until the body was carried out to go to the funeral. Most people would come between late morning and into the evening, “but then there were the people who wanted to come to sit with the remains…and they’d spend the night…if there were more than two or three there they’d be telling wicked ghost stories to scare the hell outta ya on the walk home early in the morning. Oh yeah and don’t worry, there was always the dileag [small drink/dram] going round!”
Despite the clergy often being disapproving of this kind of imbibing, even to the extent that a Bishop in Antigonish threatened to excommunicate people for serving alcohol at wakes, the practice remained strong: “It was important that people receive that hospitality.”
A’ chiste agus an tìodhlacadh | The casket and the funeral
Most caskets, up until the 1950s, were made by local carpenters in the community who would be known to carry out this service and usually didn’t charge for it. Jean mentioned how these carpenters often experienced ‘forerunners’, hearing lumber move or seeing tools fall from their position, only to hear soon after that someone had died and they were to build their casket. There is a very interesting article on this topic in Issue 18 of Cape Breton’s Magazine, available online. Coming into the second half of the 20th century, people usually bought caskets from the Co-op for around $75.
Recalling her second wake, when she was still a young child and her grandfather passed away, Jean inadvertently demonstrated how often grief and humour live side-by-side as she remembers how she learned a new meaning of the word ‘casket’. Upon hearing that they were going to carry her grandfather out of the wakehouse and down to the church in “the casket” Jean was confused, wondering how in the world they were going to manage to roll her grandfather up in the newspaper, the Antigonish Casket, and get him to the funeral!
The common word for funeral in Gaelic is tìodhlacadh and a tìodhlac also means a gift or donation: it is as if the person is being gifted to God, the earth or the ancestors, depending on your belief system. When it came to burying the dead, the graves would have traditionally been dug by local men in the community. This was, and remains, a challenging task during Nova Scotia winters when the ground is frozen. Jean expressed her concern of what has become quite common practice in the present day— to hold the funeral close to the time of death but then wait to carry out the burial in spring. She felt this might be re-traumatizing for the family, and also expensive to ship the deceased back and forth between the funeral parlour and local community, becoming a concern for people who are not well-off.
In the days before both funeral parlours and heavy machinery, Shamus recalled a story from Marie MacIsaac in Georgeville, Antigonish County. There, the grave-diggers had to light a fire to thaw the frozen winter ground, dig down a little and then light another fire, carrying on like this until they had dug a deep enough uaigh or “‘grave.”
Ri spòrs | Pranking and jokes
Alongside the sadness of a person’s death, both Jean and Shamus spoke of the cleasan | “tricks” and fun that were often a part of making a person’s departure from this world. As Shamus put it, “They weren’t necessarily the sedate, solemn, religious affairs we think of them as today…if the death was anticipated, if the person had lived a good long life and had a good death the tone could be quite cheerful. I’ve talked to some people who said it was more like a wedding or a party—there was food, there was drink, people were visiting and catching up.”
Jean remembered how “especially in the summertime, there’d be a little devillment going on. [. . . ] I heard a story one time, a fella went outside and he took a broom handle and he put it through the window and he got it underneath the [deceased] guy’s jacket. Then he was outside at the window and he took the stick and he stuck it a little bit and then when they saw the movement of the jacket well I guess they were just clear, clear crazy!” Similarly, Shamus recalled a story of a pipe being passed around a wake and some of those present asking the deceased “an gabh thu smòcadh?” (will you have a smoke?). Someone got behind the body with a stick and made the head jerk up a little as if to respond, no doubt eliciting a similar response to the one in Jean’s story.
This tradition of pranking sits in common with recorded customs in Ireland and Newfoundland. Although it might seem disrespectful today, Shamus encouraged us to re-frame it: “I don’t think that was the intent at all, we have to look at [these practices] from the inside…[as] one cultural response to death, and it was considered by some people at the time to be perfectly acceptable.” You can read more of Shamus’ research around these nuances in his papers such as With Respect to the Dead: Reconstructing an Historic View of Death in Gaelic Nova Scotia and "There was Rowdyism there, Boy" Exploring How Old-Time Wakes are Remembered in the Maritimes.
Grief works in community
Frances’s third and final guest, Cassandra, spoke from her extensive experience studying death in an academic context and participating in community deathcare work. She acknowledged the discomfort and alienation many of us may feel now that death has become a more sanitised and institutionalised process. Medical care centres like hospitals and hospitals tend to us as we leave the world, and funeral parlours then take over to prepare our bodies for the last rites. Very few people are still waked at home in the traditional manner. We may struggle to know what to say when someone loses a loved one, and struggle even more with our own feelings of grief around the loss of a beloved.
Cassandra reflected that our Gaelic customs and traditions, vivid within living memory, may offer us a way to reclaim death as a community and cultural experience. She commented on how, “It struck me that from a theoretical perspective, the way that psychologists identify and treat grief has actually all of the qualities that are naturally [there] when death is handled the way that’s been described here already tonight.” She pointed out that “healthy grieving is about reducing that alienation” that many of us now feel.
Reflecting on developments in grief theory since the well-known “stages of grief” model by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Cassandra outlined the “task-based” theory of J. William Wardon. Wardon describes mourning as emotional work we have to move through, listing four main tasks we must complete during the process. The first is accepting the reality of the loss, with rituals such as wakes and funerals helping us understand, in our bodies and our minds, that the person has passed. The second task is to process the pain of the loss, ideally held in the comfort of friends, family and community. The third task is to create a new identity beyond the habits, roles and daily rhythms which build up around the relationship we had with the person who has passed. The fourth is to find enduring connection after death through what Cassandra referred to as “continuing bonds.” We can discover that the act of re-membering a person allows them to exist with us in a new kind of body, as a living presence in our lives.
One of the clearest messages to come from this rich discussion, re-emerging through the interviews, breakout room discussions and in the Zoom chat, was how we need each other to process and move through these profound moments of life and death. Grief is work that requires time, energy and community support. Just as Gaels have gathered together to form work parties for all kinds of tasks, from milling to barn raising to harvesting to spinning, we can continue this practice in our collective death work as well. Attending wakes and funerals is still a common practice among the Gaelic communities of Nova Scotia—what other practices might we re-kindle to honour our ancestors and our living culture as it continues to grow today?
What we said
After listening to the conversation, discussing what we’d heard in the breakout rooms, and then returning to the main room, we shared our reflections in the chat. Below is a sample of our comments. Read the full transcript here, along with more resources and links.
Death is part of life. Facing the fact of it is therapeutic, and doing so over a couple of days and nights is A) to be certain of the person's death and not bury them prematurely, and B) psychologically helpful in terms of processing that the person has gone, transitioned worlds
I just had a death in the family this week, and I shared a funny story at the funeral. Humor IS so important, and people appreciated laughing in the midst of grief.
I love hearing about this continuing bonds piece. I feel it built into Gaelic cultural expression so much - as composers, singers, storytellers, etc. are remembered long after they have passed as we sing their songs, play their tunes, dance their steps, etc.
The dialogue makes me realize that not everyone is as alienated from death as I was, and I want to learn more about the rich deathcaring traditions that help us maintain continued bonds with our dead
I was reminded again of the importance of humor and laughter at wakes and funerals. That and stories of the one who has passed - creating a more vibrant memory. This has been an excellent topic, thank you for choosing it. Looking forward to the next series!
Postscript
In preparing for this session, Frances put out a call for people to share stories around deathcare customs and practices. Heather MacLeod-Leslie kindly gave permission for her story to be included in this summary:
My great great grandfather, Iain Màiri (John Mary) MacLeod was born on the boat between the Isle of Lewis and Cape Breton to his recently widowed mother in May of 1828. He used to say that he was, "from neither here nor there." He lived until just days shy of his 95th birthday, having lost his wife, Red Annie (née MacDonald), also in her 90s, shortly before.
As he felt his days waning, he asked his nephew, one of the Nickersons who had a funeral business, in Baddeck I believe, to "build him a box."
Upon his death, due to old age, his body was carried on a sleigh drawn by horse up the side of the mountain to the Old Settlers' Cemetery (if you don't know where to look, you'll never find it on the Duncan Gillis Quarry property at Big Hill) to rest with his wife. We were told they used a sleigh because it was easier on the horses with the steep slope of the mountainside. When they stopped to rest, the sleigh would sit and not roll and pull them back down the mountain.It is a beautiful, seemingly forgotten place in the forest. I haven't been there in a few years but plan to go again this spring...to pay my respects and check in with the folks resting there :)