Coronach
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Coronach. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
kor'o-nak, a dirge, a lamentation, customary among the ancient Scotch and the Irish. It was sung usually by professionals, who recited the virtues and exploits of the dead. Scott's Lady of the Lake gives a fine specimen of the coronach chanted to the sad music of the bagpipe over the remains of Duncan. Cotter's Saturday Night, The, a poem by Robert Burns, published in 1786. This is one of the best and most famous of Burns's longer poems. It describes the home of a Scottish peasant on Saturday, when the father from the field and the children from service "amang the farmers roun" gather in the humble cottage rejoicing that the week's work is over. The brothers and sisters visit together, "each tells the uncos that he sees or hears." They give a portion of their earnings to the mother and listen to their father's counsels. A guest arrives and is welcomed, the simple supper is eaten, and all gather "round the ingle" for family worship. Then they separate, the older children to return to work, the little ones to bed, and father and mother are left alone. See Burns Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, At service out, amang the farmers roun': Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin A cannie errand to a neebor town! Their eldest hope, their Jennie, woman grown, In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e, Comes hame, perhaps, to show a braw new gown, Or deposit her sair-won penny-fee, To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. Wi' joy unfeign'd brothers and sisters meet, An' each for other's welfare kindly spiers? The social hours, swift-winged, unnoticed fleet; Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears; The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years, Anticipation forward points the view; The mother, wi' her needle an' her shears, Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new; The father mixes a' wi' admonition due. VOCABULARY. belyve, by and by tentie, heedful, cautious braw, fine, handsome sair, sadly, sorely spiers, inquires uncos, news gars, makes claes, clothes
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a name formerly used for the funeral dirge among the Irish and Scottish highlanders. The dirge, disused in Scotland, is in Ireland commonly known as the keen.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's (1910) and Collier's (1921) agree on the definition, and it still stands: the coronach (Gaelic corranach) was a sung lament over the dead, and Collier's was right that by 1921 it was "disused in Scotland" while surviving in Ireland as the keen. What has gone since is the Irish practice too. Discouraged by clergy and eroded by the modern funeral trade, keening had all but vanished as a living graveside custom by the mid-20th century, preserved mainly in folklore-collection recordings of elderly women and in revival performances. The word itself now survives chiefly in literature and music: the coronach for Duncan that Aiton's praises in Scott's Lady of the Lake was set by Schubert in 1825 and is still sung in concert halls, and pipers' laments are often called coronachs.
Written for this edition, 2026.