Wake
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Wake. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the act of keeping watch, a vigil. Wakes appear to have been of two kinds, Teutonic and Celtic. In Anglo-Saxon countries communities were wont to gather for an all night solemn service in commemoration of some saint or some event. The only remnant of this practice is possibly the custom of watching the old year out. The olden English churches were dedicated by an all night watch of the parish. The floor was strewn with rushes, the pulpit decorated with flowers, and the walls hung with green boughs. Booths were erected in the churchyard to supply refreshments on the following day and evening which was kept as a general holiday. The crowds became so large at these church wakes that they lost their reverential character and became mere fairs for merrymaking, degenerating into buffoonery and license. Oftentimes they were occasions of drunken riots. These parish wakes were suppressed finally by public opinion and self respect. The custom of keeping watch by the dead appears among most primitive peoples. It was practiced formerly by the Gaelic inhabitants of Scotland and by the Welsh as well, but, among civilized nations, it is now confined to Ireland and to Irish settlements in the newer parts of the world. The genuine Irish wake is considered a mark of respect to the deceased and to the relatives. The greater the crowd, the greater the occasion. The older people are presumed to conduct themselves with decorum. The younger people are at liberty to indulge in gaiety and dancing, into which the entire party may be drawn. It was customary in former times, indeed, for the nearest of kin to lead off a melancholy dance with weeping and wailing. No wake is properly observed without refreshments served on a scale corresponding to the means of the deceased. A few jugs of poteen are considered an excellent beginning. The custom is waning.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a term corresponding originally to vigil, and applied to a festival held on the anniversary of the day on which the parish church was consecrated and dedicated to a saint. A lyke or lich wake (Anglo-Saxon, lic, a corpse) is the watching of a dead body by night by the relatives and friends of the deceased. The practice, once_general, is now confined to the lower Irish classes, and frequently accompanied by scenes much out of keeping with the sad occasion.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's said in 1910 that "the custom is waning," and Collier's in 1921 confined the lyke-wake to "the lower Irish classes" — a class judgement no modern reference work would print. The Irish wake did not die: it survives as a two- or three-day sequence of viewing, prayers and hospitality, though the body is now more often laid out in a funeral home than in the front room, and the poteen and dancing the older account describes have largely gone. The COVID-19 restrictions of 2020–21, which barred neighbours from calling to the house, were widely felt in Ireland as an attack on the custom itself, and wake attendance rebounded sharply afterwards. The church wakes Aiton's thought suppressed by "public opinion and self respect" had in fact become the Lancashire and Yorkshire "wakes weeks," annual mill-town shutdowns that only faded in the later 20th century as factories closed and package holidays took over.
Written for this edition, 2026.