Note: a recording of this lecture is now available on our YouTube channel here.

Annaghdown Heritage Society is pleased to announce its first presentation for autumn 2023 by Dr Pádraig Ó Héalaí, entitled “Cillíní: a Review of Children’s Funerary Rites in Ireland”. The talk will be held in the Heritage Room, Old Girls’ School, Corrandulla on Wednesday, 25 October at 8pm. The lecture is open to the public and can also be viewed on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4244845743.
In contrast with those of adults, the funerary rites of children in former times, were incomplete and rudimentary. The diminished ritual that marked infant and child death is outlined, and its significance – especially that of burial in places other than the family graveyard – is discussed. It is proposed that the status of children and the inherent dynamic of ritual offer a satisfactory explanation for earlier practices and their recent reappraisal.

Pádraig Ó Héalaí is a native of the Gaeltacht area on the Dingle peninsula, came to the University of Galway in 1981 as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern Irish, having previously lectured in the Irish Department at the University of Maynooth. He continued to work in Galway until his retirement in 2006, where he specialised in the study of Irish folk tradition, an area in which he lectured and published widely. He was editor of the journal, Béaloideas. The Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society from 1980 until 1995, and his other publications include a study of Irish religious tales (An Slánaitheoir ag Siúl ar an Talamh, 2012), two co-edited volumes on the repertoire of the Blasket Island storyteller, Peig Sayers (recently reprinted in paperback), and last year, a collection of essays on aspects of Irish folklore, Snátha den Seansaol / Strands of Traditional Life, which includes an essay on the topic of this talk.