Hello, I’m Jude. I live on the West Coast of Scotland, a few miles from Loch Lomond. I worked as a librarian for over 25 years, and gained my M.S.c in Human Ecology with the Centre for Human Ecology, in partnership with Glasgow’s Strathclyde University - my thesis a study of the Goddess Brighid as a Goddess Archetype and her Relevance to Cultural Activists in Contemporary Scotland.

My introduction to keening can from the request of a dear friend who way dying of cancer and asked me would I keen over her dead body. While I replied yes, I had no idea what I was agreeing to. Today the focus of my work is in re-envisioning keening and exploring how this age-old practice can meet our needs today in becoming more familiar with grief, exploring our own grief through creativity and ritual.

While I found some articles and songs I knew this was something that had to come from the heart and soul and so I stepped into that circle, with my friend’s body laid out and just did what I felt right. 

Finding Keening

After the request of my friend to perform a keening ceremony I began looking for articles and listening to traditional laments. From my reading I imagined seeing the Bean Chaointe (Keening woman in Irish) perform the keen must have been a moving experience. How she would have addressed the dead, tapping into her own grief and the elements of theatre and ritual she used. Her role, as described by Michelle Collins her article Divine Madness - brought the community through the actions of their keen - the means through which transformation occurred, bringing the community from a state of intense grief and disharmony to a post-liminal state, a place of acceptance and stability. Within the keen she also performed the role of guiding the soul home.

Dark Haired Alan

My journey with keening didn’t finish after the wake of my friend I heard a very moving Scottish lament, whose Gaelic translation was Dark Haired Alan, which spoke to my younger brother, both Called Allan and with dark hair, who had died aged 36. as not long after my dead younger brother spoke to me in a song called Dark Haired Alan, which has become a familiar lament. The request of my friend hadn’t just asked me to keen but had reached into me and drawn out something I would never ordinarily have the belief or confidence to do. 

Re-envisioning Keening

Re-envisioning keening is using the inspiration of this age-old ritual to meet our needs around grief today. In the Wild Edge of Sorrow Francis Weller describes that we live in a grief-phobic and death-denying culture, no longer possessing the tools to grieve with, death is swiftly swept up and processed behind doors by the industrial funeral industry. 

Re-envisioning offers space to connect with grief, to let our hands and heart process our feelings through creative projects such as making a keening doll or weaving grief while keening circles provide a curated musical journey which allows for expressions such as anger, frustration or despair. Within the keening ritual is a liminal phase, one in which transformation and healing can take place as we change our relationship with grief.

Gather the Keeners - Painting by Jude Lally

The Benefits of Keening Projects 

I re-envision keening through creative projects such as creating a keening doll or a grief doll which offer a way of holding the stories through symbols felted onto the dolls and the choice of fabrics (often using a deceased persons clothing or jewellery) which allows the doll to hold the story of a persons grief.

Keening circles are curated musical journeys that guide us through varying emotions of grief from anger and frustration, they are liminal rituals which can bring comfort (many have shared that they have felt the comforting presence of a dead relative or ancestor) they can also bring about a transformation and provide insight. One aspect they allow is in becoming more familiar with our own grief.

Ancient Spiritual Bedrock 

Keening is rooted in an Ancient Spiritual Bedrock, it’s an age-old tradition in the lands of both Scotland and Ireland. Keening is more than just the crying and lamenting part and is part of a larger ritual. It is rooted in the land, for me - rotted in the land of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland, my own spiritual foundation. Working with the inspiration of keening is also tapping into the land, a sense of belonging, the stories, history and folklore of a place, the environmental and social issues of place and considering the future life. It’s about imagination and creativity, a communication with place and exploring being inspired by these old traditions.

Re-envisioning keening is my form of activism, tapping down into the ancient spiritual bedrock, connecting to the Ancestral Mothers and ancient traditions such as keening - providing the backbone, the roots to let this practice evolve and flourish in new ways. 

In exploring keening it’s important to look at the reasons and attacks as to why this practice was attempted to be erased, from the English colonisors banning people from speaking Irish, to the Church protest in the keening woman connection to what they termed a pagan otherworld, and not Christian heaven and a continuing social stigma associated with the practice. Yet scholar Mary McLoughlin suggests that perhaps keening didn’t die out, it just went underground and surfaces when it is needed.

Spiritual Activism

Keening lies at the intersection of three of my passions: creativity, ritual and activism. Using the symbol of the triskele each of the three arms spiral out from the centre, the three above interconnected in the ancient spiritual bedrock.

• Creativity - Creative projects help us explore grief where we don’t have the words, we let out heart and hands create and we transfer feeling into what we are creating.

• Ritual - Using the language of ritual (such as a keening circle) to enter into that liminal space where the unexpected can often take place, a catalyst which can begin the healing process

• Activism - Activism takes many forms and mine is based around reclaiming grief. It is fostered by my relationship to the land, and rooted in an ancient spiritual bedrock inspired by ancient traditions and adding new rituals which speak to our needs today.

The Little Notched Plant of Brighid

Brighid is a Goddess who has very much pushed me out of my comfort zone, with each step of keening. I use the inspiration of the dandelion, called 'bearnan Bride,' in Gaelic, the little notched of Bride, referencing the serrated edge of the petal.