‘The Dead Don’t Bury Themselves’

It sounds like a morbid research project: interviewing people involved in after-death care, including undertakers, funeral directors, embalmers, clergy, and both humanist and civil celebrants.

But not for Ray Cashman, a folklorist who is the Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies at Boston College this semester. Caring for the dead is as old as humanity itself, he says, and offers important insights into the beliefs, concerns, and values of the living. The fact that, over time, many societies have entrusted to others—and professionalized—this task outside the immediate family is revealing in and of itself, he adds.

Now, through his recently launched study of death care workers in Ireland—for a book project titled “The Dead Don’t Bury Themselves”: Irish Funerary Traditions in a Changing World—Cashman seeks to shine a light on the evolving customs, attitudes, ideas, and practices surrounding death within the profession and, by extension, society itself.

Cashman will discuss his research at the Burns Visiting Scholar Lecture, on April 8 at 6 p.m. in the Burns Library Thompson Room. A 5 p.m. reception will precede the event, which is free and open to the public.

Ireland is a decidedly apt subject for his study, says Cashman: It has the only museum in the world devoted to wakes and funerary traditions; many Irish keep daily track of death notices via radio and the Internet; and whatever their faith, or lack of it, Irish people routinely attend wakes, visitations, and funerals even without an invitation, to honor the deceased and support the bereaved.

“In the United States, death tends to be an uncomfortable topic, often a very private matter,” said Cashman, the Provost Professor of Folklore at Indiana University-Bloomington. “But in Ireland, there is a long tradition of acknowledging death through various rituals and events, not just for family but the community as well. These are important rites of passage, because they help people live up to the best affirmations of themselves.

“Irish death care workers, by virtue of their jobs, have developed a shared occupational lore around the existence or non-existence of spirits, the afterlife, and other unexplained mysteries related to death. What do their stories say about the wider human experience?”

A collaboration between the Irish Studies Program and University Libraries, the Burns Scholar program brings outstanding academics, writers, journalists, librarians, and other notable figures to the University. Burns Scholars typically spend a semester at BC teaching courses, offering public lectures, and working with the resources of the Burns Library in their ongoing research, writing, and creative endeavors related to Irish history, art, and culture.

With a background in religious studies and anthropology, Cashman—who holds degrees from Williams College and Indiana-Bloomington—integrates ethnographic, historical, and literary approaches to Irish folklore and vernacular culture. His research and teaching focus on oral traditions, poetics and performance, custom and ritual, material culture, and the relationship between folklore, history, and memory. His ethnographic work in the Irish borderlands such as the counties of Donegal and Tyrone pays particular attention to the politics of culture, identity, tradition, and place.

Cashman acknowledges that the word “folklore” often carries an antiquarian association, suggesting an interest in things that seem outmoded, even quaint, but he begs to differ.

“Folklore speaks the past and the present in the same breath,” he said. “Folklore studies, as a field, straddles literature, history, and anthropology: It’s the humanities of everyday life; the people’s knowledge, learned within the family and community, and a means to find common ground. Of course, some aspects of our lives change over time and the ‘old way’ of doing things may recede—but then new ways fill the space.”

As a case in point relevant to his project, Cashman notes that livestream funerals have become increasingly common in Ireland. “It seems hypermodern but is an example of an innovation that helps people to follow deeply held beliefs and practices. In this case, livestreaming fulfills the impulse to gather as many people as possible to share loss in a meaningful way.”

Such shifts in customs and practices are observed by and discussed among death care workers, who are hardly uniform in their views on death. “When it comes to, say, the existence of a soul or the afterlife, those who strongly believe or disbelieve are in the minority. Instead, there’s a lot of ambivalence and uncertainty, because rational explanations don’t always comport with our experiences.”

Cashman cites atheist Billy Mag Fhloinn, among the growing number of “humanist celebrants” who officiate at funerals, weddings, memorials, and other such events. Although Mag Fhloinn—the source of the book’s primary title—does not observe a traditional faith, notes Cashman, he recognizes that many customs and rites surrounding death, even in an increasingly secular society, pre-suppose the existence of a soul and an afterlife.

In an interview with Cashman, Mag Fhloinn noted that “rational, secular people do things in a funeral space that are concretizations of abstract ideas—we’re saying goodbye to the person, even though we know they can’t hear us. We might put flowers in the grave, or we might speak directly to the body at the wake. We know they can’t hear us. They’re dead, they’re gone.”

Indulging in such symbolic thinking and ritualized thought and behavior help us “come to terms much more viscerally with the idea that [the deceased is] in this in-between state, in this liminal space,” Mag Fhloinn told Cashman. “They’re in front of us, but something’s gone from them. And that halfway stage, psychologically, I think is hugely important.”

Having access to the Burns Library’s extensive archives is already paying off for Cashman. “I recently found the correspondence of the very first Catholic undertaker in Boston, a native of Ireland. It’s the kind of day-to-day historical and comparative perspective that will be invaluable to my work.”

Cashman also is teaching the course Irish Folklore to a combined class of undergraduate and graduate students. Instead of traditions of the distant past, he is focused on those documented from the 19th century to the present—a period in which folklore inspired an Irish literary revival, aided the newly independent Irish Republic’s attempt at nation building, and continues to foment creative responses to modernity.  

For more about the Burns Visiting Scholar program, visit libguides.bc.edu/burnsscholars.