dead-watch

Updated: May 20, 2025

"You may all laugh," replied Denis, "but I know such things to have a manin'. When my mother died, didn't my father, the heavens be his bed! see a black coach about a week before it? an' sure from the first day she tuck ill, the dead-watch was heard in the house every night: and what was more nor that, she kept warm until she went into her grave; * an' accordingly, didn't my sisther Shibby die within a year afther?"

William Carleton - The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh: Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of: William Carleton, Volume Three

"It's no matther about thim things," replied Anthony; "it's thruth about the dead-watch, my mother keepin' warm, an' Shibby's death, any way, But on the night we tuck Cassidy's horse, I thought you were goin' to betray us: I was surely in a murdherin' passion, an' would have done harm, only things turned out as they did."

William Carleton - The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh: Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of: William Carleton, Volume Three