coronach

In the 1980s, I discovered that Lewis Carroll's first ever published works were two poems in the Whitby Gazette – Coronach and the Lady of the Ladle – verified by the Lewis Carroll Society.

Come, pipes, sound A crooning coronach round, Till hill and hollow glen and shadowed lake o’erflow With welling music of our woe.

On one grave a young woman was rocking herself to and fro, wailing with a sound like the Highland coronach, but longer and more despairing.

Who would have thought that Peter of Arrandoon would have lived to play his own coronach?”

You might have imagined while Rory played that you saw his countrymen dancing at a wake, and heard even their wild “Hooch!” but at the same time you could not help fancying you saw the mourners crooning over the coffin, and heard the broken-hearted wail of the coronach.