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Piper at the wake

"Years ago, asylums for fools and idiots were few and far between, and every village seemed to have a 'natural' (as an imbecile was called) belonging to it. Near Randalstown there was a miserable old decrepit woman of this class - Nancy Bags. She was a pitiable object - terribly courbée - quite bent double, and incapable of standing upright or straightening her back, on which was a sack containing straw, potatoes, rags, or anything she could pick up - a poor half-witted creature, bowed down by disease and pinching poverty. In course of time old Nancy died, and was duly waked. It was no easy matter to 'lay her out,' and owing to her long-standing infirmity it was next to an impossibility to lay the body flat, and recourse was had to cords and ligatures to retain her in a recumbent position; however, the work was satisfactorily accomplished, and the orgies of the wake proceeded."

From Random Stories, Chiefly Irish, by Major H. S. M'Clintock, published in Belfast by Marcus Ward & Company, in the late Nineteenth Century.

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