Lyke Wake Dirge

"Lyke-Wake Dirge"
Song
Language	English (Yorkshire dialect)
Written	Unknown
Songwriter(s)	Unknown

The "Lyke-Wake Dirge" is a traditional English song that tells of the soul's travel, and the hazards it faces, on its way from earth to purgatory. Though the song is from the Christian era and features references to Christianity much of the symbolism is thought to be of pre-Christian origin.

The title refers to the act of watching over the dead between the death and funeral, known as a wake. "Lyke" is an obsolete word meaning a corpse, and is related to the German word Leiche and the Dutch word lijk, which have the same meaning. It survives in modern English in the expression lychgate, the roofed gate at the entrance to a churchyard, where, in former times, a dead body was placed before burial, and the fictional undead monster type lich. "Lyke-wake" could also be from the Norse influence on the Yorkshire dialect: the contemporary Norwegian and Swedish words for "wake" are still "likvake" and "likvaka" respectively ("lik" and "vaka"/"vake" with the same meanings as previously described for "lyke" and "wake").

The song is written in an old form of the Yorkshire dialect of Northern English. It goes:

The safety and comfort of the soul in faring over the hazards it faces in the afterlife, are in the old ballad made contingent on the dead person's willingness in life to participate in charity. The poem was first collected by John Aubrey in 1686, who also recorded that it was being sung in 1616, but it is believed to be much older.

There would appear to be a lacuna in the version that Aubrey collected. Unlike the preceding and following pairs of stanzas, nothing happens at the Brig o' Dread. Richard Blakeborough, in his Wit, Character, Folklore, and Customs of the North Riding, fills this apparent gap with verses he says were in use in 1800, and which seem likely to be authentic:

In this version, the Brig o' Dread is the decisive ordeal that determines whether the soul's destination is Heaven or Hell.

This ballad was one of 25 traditional works included in Ballads Weird and Wonderful (1912) and illustrated by Vernon Hill.

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Wikipedia