Today’s Poem: Lyke Wake

Fire and fleet and candle-lighte

Walter MacEwen, The Absent One on All Souls’ Day, 1889 (Wikimedia Commons)

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Lyke Wake Dirge

by Anonymous

This ae nighte, this ae nighte,                          ◦ ae = one
	(refrain) Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,
	(refrain) And Christe receive thy saule.       ◦ saule = soul

When thou from hence away art past,
To Whinny-muir thou com’st at last;              ◦ whinny-muir = gorse moor

If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon,             ◦ hosen, shoon = stockings, shoes
Sit thee down and put them on;

If hosen and shoon thou ne’er gav’st nane
The whinnes sall prick thee to the bare bane;     ◦ bane = bone

From Whinny-muir when thou may’st pass, 
To Brig o’ Dread thou com’st at last;                     ◦ brig = bridge

From Brig o’ Dread when thou may’st pass,
To Purgatory fire thou com’st at last;

If ever thou gavest meat or drink,
The fire sall never make thee shrink;

If meat or drink thou ne’er gav’st nane,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;

This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
	Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,
	And Christe receive thy saule. 
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There is a moment, the old ones knew, when the dead draw near their corpses a final time, as the mourners stand watch at a wake. And then those dead souls must trudge down the road of judgment: across the bleak and thorny moor and over the Bridge of Dread.

If you fed the poor in life, in death you will find sustenance. If you clothed the poor in life, in death you will find clothes to wear. And if not, the gorse will tear your feet, the fires burn your limbs, and judgment gnaw your bones.

Halloween was yesterday, All Saints’ today, and All Souls’ tomorrow. And in that autumn triduum, perhaps it’s worth remembering the way we used to see the dead: as metaphysical realities, as cosmically significant travelers, as both actors and measures of victory in the celestial war of justice and injustice, good and evil, Heaven and Hell.

The “Lyke Wake Dirge” is a purgatorial song in an old Yorkshire dialect. John Aubrey collected it in 1686, saying it had traditionally been sung by a woman at Yorkshire funerals until the Reformation’s modernizing drove it out in the first quarter of the 17th century. Certainly the Catholic elements suggest the “Lyke Wake Dirge” comes from much earlier — as does the Christianized pagan element of the Bridge of Dread (which is treated at greater length in verses other versions add to Aubrey’s).

The theological root is a purgatorial reading of Christ’s Eschatological Discourse in the Book of Matthew, particularly Matthew 25:31–46:

I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

The spookiness of the poem has been an inspiration for various singers. Lyke is an old word for corpse, and whinny-muir a name for a moor on which the rough thorny gorse grows. Fleet is trickier, in the line “Fire and fleet and candle-lighte.” Some scholars suggest it’s a miswriting for “sleet” (since scripted and early printed f’s and s’s looked similar), and thus the line opposes fire to rain. But I prefer taking fleet in the sense of flet (“house, floor, large room”), with the three elements of fire, fleet, and candle-light describing the home the dead must leave behind.

In a world populated by the dead — at, say, Halloween, All Saints’, All Souls’ — life is thick with ghosts and spirits. And the harsh logic of judgment is played out in cosmic truth.

Sebastiano Conca, The Holy Trinity and Saints in Glory, pre-1764; Follower of Hieronymus Bosch, An Angel Leading a Soul into Hell, c. 1500

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