On the Keen
There is a moment when sorrow is not held in but let out — sounded aloud, wailed, sung half-broken — so that no one is left alone in it. In Ireland it had a name: the caoineadh, the keen. How it was shamed out of Irish life, and the Travelling people who kept it when the settled world let it fall. Set apart from the philosophy proper, because it is not mine to fold neatly into a system.
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On the Keen
Throughout the work of The Fire Community there is a word I have used again and again, almost without thinking, for the giving of voice to grief: the keen. It is the word for the moment when sorrow is not held in but let out — sounded aloud, wailed, sung half-broken — so that what is inside a person is carried into the air and shared, and no one is left alone in it. I did not invent this word, and I did not invent the thing it names. It is one of the oldest inheritances of this island, and I want, here, to honour where it comes from, and the people who kept it when others let it fall.
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Four parts
- On the Keen
- The Caoineadh
- How It Was Lost — and Who Kept It
- Why It Belongs Here
About this edition
- Author
- G. S. Maher
- Publisher
- Fire Community Books
- Format
- PDF (12 pages) and EPUB
- ISBN
- 978-1-919100-07-4 (electronic edition)
- Price
- Free, and always free
- Licence
- Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0: share it whole and unchanged, never for sale.
- Belongs with
- The Fire Under the Grass