The Chairs Were Left Flat on the Street: Evidence of a Funerary Tradition in Ulster

Abstract

In 1963 a questionnaire on the subject of local funeral customs was circulated by the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, which elicited important information on a range of traditions associated with death. In this paper, accounts of the custom of knocking over the chairs on which the coffin rested immediately prior to the funeral are analysed as a symbol of transference from the natural to the other world.