Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
The House that Jack Built - Irish Wake Games
Reading about folklore and hearing it from someone are two very different things. Here is a great example from undertaker Sean Condon from Clonmel in Co. Tipperary who recalls to me a game he saw played at wakes growing up. The topic just cropped up in conversation and he opens up remembers the little verse that he heard 50 years ago as if it was only yesterday.
For those who don't know, there was a game based on the old English rhyme called The House that Jack Built which was played in schools, homes and at wakes in Ireland in the early to mid 1900s, probably earlier. My own grandmother in Ballygarrett in Co. Wexford had the verse too.
The game involved passing on a stick and you’d be told it was “something that lay in the house that Jack built”. It was passed onto the next person and they'd repeat the line with another bit of the poem added on, and on and on it went. However, as Sean points out, who ever makes a bags of it and drops or forget the lines, literally got a leathering from a belt. The game ends with the last lines which Sean recalls for me.
“There’s the bell that rang early in the morning, that woke the Priest all shaven and shorn, that married the man all tattered and torn, and to the maiden all forlorn, that milked the cow with the crumbly horn, that tossed the dog all over the barn, that worried the cat that killed the rat, that gnawed the cord that tied the sack, the lay in the house that Jack built.”
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This interview was recorded by Michael Fortune with Funeral Director Sean Condon in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary in September 2024. It was recorded for the Tipperary Museum of Hidden History as part of a research exhibition organised by curator Jayne Sutcliffe around death and funeral customs from Co. Tipperary.
The House that Jack Built - Irish Wake Games
Reading about folklore and hearing it from someone are two very different things. Here is a great example from undertaker Sean Condon from Clonmel in Co. Tipperary who recalls to me a game he saw played at wakes growing up. The topic just cropped up in conversation and he opens up remembers the little verse that he heard 50 years ago as if it was only yesterday.
For those who don't know, there was a game based on the old English rhyme called The House that Jack Built which was played in schools, homes and at wakes in Ireland in the early to mid 1900s, probably earlier. My own grandmother in Ballygarrett in Co. Wexford had the verse too.
The game involved passing on a stick and you’d be told it was “something that lay in the house that Jack built”. It was passed onto the next person and they'd repeat the line with another bit of the poem added on, and on and on it went. However, as Sean points out, who ever makes a bags of it and drops or forget the lines, literally got a leathering from a belt. The game ends with the last lines which Sean recalls for me.
“There’s the bell that rang early in the morning, that woke the Priest all shaven and shorn, that married the man all tattered and torn, and to the maiden all forlorn, that milked the cow with the crumbly horn, that tossed the dog all over the barn, that worried the cat that killed the rat, that gnawed the cord that tied the sack, the lay in the house that Jack built.”
..........................
This interview was recorded by Michael Fortune with Funeral Director Sean Condon in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary in September 2024. It was recorded for the Tipperary Museum of Hidden History as part of a research exhibition organised by curator Jayne Sutcliffe around death and funeral customs from Co. Tipperary.
