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 Heaven. Though the song is from the Christian era and features references to Christianity much of the symbolism is thought to be of heathen origin.[1][2][3][4]
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The title refers to the watch over the dead between the death and funeral, known as a wake. "Lyke" is an obsolete word meaning a dead body, 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 lych gate, the roofed gate at the entrance to a churchyard, where, in former times, bodies were 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 to participate in the sorts of charity mentioned in Matthew 25:31-46. 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 (sculptor).
The Whinny-muir of this tale also appears in The Well of the World's End as the "Muir o' Heckle-pins".[5]
Aubrey's version of the words includes fire and fleet, rather than fire and sleet, and this is also how it appears in the Oxford Book of English Verse. F.W. Moorman, in his book on Yorkshire dialect poetry, explains that fleet means floor and references the OED, flet-floor. He also notes that the expression Aboute the fyre upon flet appears in the mediaeval story Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and explains that "Fire and fleet and candle-light are a summary of the comforts of the house, which the dead person still enjoys for this ae night, and then goes out into the dark and cold."
The poem has been recorded a number of times as a song. Benjamin Britten set it to music as a part of his Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings in 1943, and, in his Cantata on Old English Texts of 1952, Igor Stravinsky uses individual verses as interludes between the longer movements. English composer Geoffrey Burgon wrote a duet (This Eane Night) for two countertenors (recorded by James Bowman and Charles Brett)with words altered slightly to fit the canonical single melody, the second countertenor starting one bar behind the first. At the end of each versicle the line rises by a semitone producing an eerie and climactic ending on top D before dropping back down to the starting tone.
A version with a different tune (but with the "fire and fleet" version of the lyrics) was collected by the folk song collector, Hans Fried, from the singing of "an old Scottish lady", Peggy Richards. The Young Tradition used this version for their a cappella recording on their 1965 debut album, using quite a primitive harmonisation, in which two of the vocal parts move in parallel fifths. The folk band Pentangle performed a version on their 1969 album Basket of Light, using the same tune as The Young Tradition, but elaborating the arrangement. Buffy Sainte-Marie also included this song on her 1967 album Fire & Fleet & Candlelight. Most later renditions of the song use the Richards-Fried melody; these include versions by Steeleye Span, the Mediaeval Baebes (titled 'This Ay Nicht') and Alasdair Roberts. The annual Spiral Dance in San Francisco has reclaimed the song's pagan roots, changing the refrain to "May earth receive thy soul". This version can be found on [Let It Begin Now: Music from the Spiral Dance].
Maddy Prior, writing in the liner notes to the Steeleye Span retrospective Spanning the Years, drily characterizes the song's countercultural appeal, in describing one 1970s performance:
5 nights at the LA Forum with Jethro Tull. We were opening our set at the time with the Lyke Wake Dirge, a grim piece of music from Yorkshire concerning pergatory [sic] and we all dressed in dramatic mummers ribbons with tall hats. The effect was stunning. 5 gaunt figures in line across the front of the stage, lit from below casting huge shadows, intoning this insistent dirge alarmed some members of the audience whose reality was already tampered with by 1970s substances. It was most satisfying.
"Lyke-Wake Dirge" is sometimes considered a ballad, but unlike a ballad it is lyric rather than narrative.
The Lyke Wake Walk is a 40-mile walking route across the North York Moors, first popularised in 1955 and named after the Lyke Wake Dirge.
The Lyke Wake Dirge was also invoked in Antonia Forest's 1959 novel End of Term and Diana Wynne Jones's novel Deep Secret, "When Will There Be Good News?" by Kate Atkinson, as well as Neil Gaiman's 1999 fantasy Neverwhere and Arnold Wesker's 1962 play Chips With Everything. It is used, with one major modification, by members of the Chantry Guild in Gordon Dickson's 1962 science fiction novel Necromancer. There, in keeping with their philosophy of universal destruction, the Chantry Guild changes the second refraine from "And Christe receive thy saule" to "Destruction take thee alle."
