New signage helps to highlight ancient wake house

Drum Heritage Committee, continually mindful of the need to record and highlight places of historical interest in Drum, has recently commissioned a number of replacement roadside signs to be located at strategic sites in the area. The Drum Committee was particularly concerned that in recent years weather conditions had played such a harmful effect on the once decorative roadside signs that were produced by well known Roscommon artist Albert Siggins. They now have replaced the old signs with some new aluminium signs, the product of an Athlone company, Spectrum Signs. As one approaches the junction of the roadway leading to Nure, visitors can view an authentic picture of the restored Wake House in the 'Caoinna Marbh' Remembrance Park. The new information signs also contain a panel, briefly explaining the funerary rites that were once a feature of life in rural Ireland and were especially remembered in Nure. Described in folklore as 'The Cabin' this is the only known restored wake house in Ireland today. In its original state it was frequently used in early Christian times as an overnight stop when walking funeral corteges passed through Nure on their way to Clonmacnois, the burial place of kings, nobles and countless thousands of local families from both sides of the river Shannon. As most people are aware, ceremonial death is the focus of a major rite of passage, leading the individual from the world of the known to that of the unknown, according by somewhat similar rituals even amongst the most remote societies all over the world. Fortunately for the Drum Heritage Committee, Nure-born, the late Kieran McManus, who was 98 years old when he died, has left a legacy of folklore recorded from him by folklore collector the late James Delaney. Kieran's recollections of wakes when the corpse reposed on the kitchen table, together with his recounting of wake games and customs relating to old time funerals are presently on display in an information panel alongside the restored wake house. There is little doubt that Kieran McManus' contribution to the Irish Folklore Commission cannot be underestimated, especially seeing that he, as a young boy witnessed many of the recordings he passed to folklore collection James Delaney 60 years later. On the information panel he gives explicit recordings on funerary rituals, not now spoken of in today's modern world. He explains details of (perhaps semi-pagan) custom of wake games, such as Hara, Hare Fox Hara, burying a bit of linen and barging matches all of which were a common feature of the two night wake that continued right through the 20th century. To add to the extensive collection of folklore customs on the outside panel a number of melencholy pieces concerning death are on display on the inside walls of the wake house itself. An interesting display features on the Black Death of 1347-1352 when over half the population of Ireland died from the pestilence. Visitors may learn of how the pandemic was overcome by the people west of the Shannon who beseeched the Abbot at Clonmacnois to pray for a deliverance, which he did, but in place on them to abstain from eating meat on St Stephen's Day. The indoor display also carries a story on the Great Famine and its effect on the people living in the Diocese of Elphin, between the years 1846 to 1847. Bishop Browne, then living in Rockfield House in Drum, recorded a startling account of the consequences of the Great Famine in the united parishes of St Peter's and Drum when in just one year - October 1846 to October 1847 - over 400 people succumbed as a result of famine and disease.