What Was an American Wake?
An American wake was a goodbye held the night before an emigrant left Ireland for America — a party that was also, deliberately, a funeral. The custom is documented from at least 1830 and was strongest in the west of Ireland. In Irish-speaking Mayo it had another name: the “feast of departure.”
They became more frequent during the Great Famine of the 1840s, when families had to make a brutal choice: who would be sent to America in hope of a better life, and who would stay behind to face the hardship. Emigration did not end with the Famine — it ran on for another century — and the wake went with it, because for most of that time the facts never changed. The person leaving would probably never see Ireland again. The people at the wake would probably never see them again. So they said goodbye properly, the night before.
On stage, Ryan-Allen usually puts it this way: “the Great Famine — or genocide, depending on your persuasion.” That argument is a real one, and it deserves more than a passing line. We’ll take it up properly when we get to Fields of Athenry, which is a Famine song through and through. This post is about the night before the boat.
Why a Wake for Someone Still Alive?
Because emigration was treated as the equivalent of a death — a permanent breaking of ties. The American wake borrowed its shape straight from the traditional wake for the dead: the kin and neighbours gathered in the house, there was food and drink, and grief and gaiety sat in the same room. Nobody pretended it was only a party, and nobody let it be only a mourning. Both things were true, and the custom made room for both.
The Night Itself: Keening, Music and the Morning Convoy
In the week before leaving, the emigrant visited every house in the community to say goodbye in person. Then came the wake itself, which ran from evening into the early morning.
There was keening — caoine, the old Irish lament — for someone who was still standing in the room. There was advice from the older people. There were messages to carry to relatives who had already made the crossing and were waiting in America. And as times improved a little, there was food, drink, dancing and music — sometimes paid for with money sent from America along with the ticket, by the family members who had gone before.
In the morning, a “convoy” of family and neighbours walked the emigrant to the crossroads or the train station. That was the last anybody saw of them.
The crossing itself gave the custom its weight. Crossings varied, but the National Museum of Ireland documents one Mayo ship, the Elizabeth and Sarah in 1847: 276 passengers sharing 32 berths, an eight-week voyage, and 42 of them dead before America. Anybody holding a wake in 1847 knew those odds. That is why the goodbye was a funeral — some of the people in that room were, in fact, saying goodbye forever, and everyone knew it.
The Elders' “American Wake” (2004)
The song is by The Elders, a Celtic rock band from Kansas City, and it gives the album its name — American Wake (2004), their third record. There’s one detail we love about that: The Elders are fronted by Ian Byrne, a native of County Wicklow. An emigrant, singing the emigrant’s goodbye ritual, from the far side of the Atlantic. The song is the diaspora looking back at the night that started it.
We play it because that night is where a huge part of the Irish-American story begins. If you want the rest of the journey, we’ve written about Thousands Are Sailing and Leaving of Liverpool. For the wake tradition carried across the ocean, see our post on Body of an American — a Philadelphia send-off for a boxer. And for what the emigrants were leaving for, All of the Hard Days Are Gone.
Want to dig deeper? The custom is laid out at Encyclopedia.com, “American Wakes”, and the National Museum of Ireland tells the story of the crossing itself. Inside Irish Music's video what Ireland sounded like before the Great Famine is a good picture of the world this custom grew in.
— hear us play it live (video above).