During funerals, they sob, throw themselves on the ground and scream, sometimes tearing their clothes or hair. Since Antiquity, mourners have occupied an important place in funeral rites. Although this tradition has existed for a long time in France, it is now very rare to see it during ceremonies, unlike other regions and cultures of the world.
But what exactly is a mourner? How do you become one? Where can we still see this practice? Juliette Cazes, specialist in the field, shared her knowledge on the subject with 20 Minutes. The independent researcher in thanatology devoted a chapter of her latest work Pioneers of the funeral world, which comes out this Thursday from Editions du Trésor (19 euros), to these female figures.
What is a mourner?
Mourners are women chosen and paid to cry, lament but also sing the praises of the deceased during funerals. They can also be relatives of the deceased. Their presence implies a very important oral manifestation of death. In the funeral tradition, a world also affected by the gendered division of roles, it is women who have taken on this task, being already “close” to the dead body. Men have missions outside of domestic work, such as putting the deceased in the coffin, carrying the coffin or digging the grave.
Even if we can have traces of the existence of mourners from the ancient world, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, in Greece, there have not been them in all cultures, not in all places in the world and they exist also periods where it stopped before being resumed.
In France, we had a tradition of mourners until around the middle of the 20th century. The last ones were in Corsica, Ariège and the Basque Country. Today, that has been lost and it is quite disturbing to find ourselves faced with mourners, because we are more in a society where pain does not necessarily have to be shown.
What are the roles of mourners at funerals?
It varies depending on each person’s beliefs. In certain cultures, this practice of crying is a way of regulating everyone’s pain and supporting the bereaved. In other traditions, noise is also linked to a “good transfer” to the “other world”. A paid mourner, beyond the spiritual aspect, can also be a person who will support a person’s social status through their presence.
During my research work, when I welcomed families – Ivorian or Ghanaian, in particular – into funeral chambers, I was able to observe that the women on whom we rely to carry out collective grief generally gather around people those most directly affected by bereavement to support them. Once in place, they launch into a sort of vocal dance, alternating very sonorous moments and calmer, often religious words, which punctuate the ceremony and seem to guide the bereaved, as if they were carried in their pain by the tears and cries of mourners. At the end of these lamentations, which can sometimes last a long time, everyone returns to their normal state, often exhausted. Crying and screaming actually serve to orchestrate and regulate the group’s state of suffering.
The mourners are therefore not ancient figures who have disappeared. On the contrary, they still exist today and still play an essential cathartic role in the funerals of many societies.
Where do we still find mourners?
In China, Mexico, Africa, the Balkans… In certain parts of the world, there are even mourning competitions, in the city of San Juan del Río, during “día de los muertos”. During this competition, in addition to the sobs and complaints of rigor, these ladies display treasures of interpretation when they praise the recently deceased. The winner wins a large sum of money and the “honor” of being the best mourner of the year.
How do you become a mourner?
Since Antiquity, there has been know-how but no written records. It is a tradition that is transmitted orally, from the oldest to the youngest. Knowledge can stay in the family, with generations of mourners, from mothers to daughters or from aunts to nieces. But it can also be a woman “selected” on the basis of several qualities, more or less objective, depending on the society. They are then considered exemplary because we are looking for “the rare pearl” in terms of purity, capable of confronting the impure world of death.
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Today’s mourners, who set up businesses in certain countries, follow a sort of apprenticeship. In this case, being a mourner becomes a job like any other, although it is particularly exhausting because we give “the maximum” for the deceased and their loved ones. In China, for example, there is a very “spectacle” side to specific ceremonies. In fact, the mourners prepare themselves, do training with choreographies to offer a “good performance” on the big day. We thus see that, if in certain cultures, the practice has become institutionalized, it is because the mourners have major importance.