In a message dated 4/6/04 7:26:58 PM Eastern Daylight Time, wpjohnson@kih.net writes: > Actually, this all is an old Irish Custom. But, the Irish use to hire > people to wail and moan at the Wake. Sometimes they lasted for days. > > > WILMA JOHNSON > > Wilma, it's funny you should mention that. I have a cute story about when my grandmother Marie Daniels Castle passed away. There was an elderly man who came for visitation, on the 1st day he came up to the casket shook hands with each of us and introduced him self as Martin. Then he went over took a seat and stayed until the showing was over. The 2nd day he showed up again and did the same thing. We started asking family members who this Martin was, none knew him, but we had thought nothing of it at first since we are related to the Martin's in Floyd Co. We thought him to be an unknown family member. That evening another family had a showing, and the Martin man went over to the room where this person was being shown, walked up to the casket and again introduced him self then took a seat. He went from room to room paying his respects to family members, it was then we realized that he must be a poor old lonely man had nothing better to do with his time then to visit funeral homes. He certainly gave us a chuckle at a sad time. Jean