One half of an 1894 stereographic, a posed, derogatory depiction of an Irish wake, titled “Mickie O’Hoolihan’s Wake.” Nine men and women are posed around a coffin containing corpse. They are smoking and drinking; one mourner appears to be passed out. A cask and various bottles are in the frame.
13 August 2021
The word wake has a number of senses in today’s speech. It can be a verb meaning to remain conscious or to bring someone to consciousness. This sense usually appears in the forms waken or awaken. It can also mean to stand watch, to keep a vigil, although this sense is rare nowadays. As a noun it can mean a state of consciousness, but again this sense is rather obsolescent; instead, this sense is more likely to be expressed by wakefulness. More often the noun wake refers to a vigil, especially a funeral vigil. The noun wake can also mean the track left by a ship on the water’s surface, but this sense is a distinct word with an entirely different origin. (For the slang sense meaning socially or political aware, especially in regard to racism, see woke.)
All but the nautical sense can be traced back to the Old English noun wæcce, a state of consciousness, and the verb wæccan, to watch, to rouse. This noun can be seen in the Old English translation of Genesis 31:38–40, where Jacob is chiding Laban for having been cheated:
Wæs ic for pam nu twentig wintra mid ðe? Naeron þine heorda stedige, ne ic ðærof ne aet. Swa hwaet swa man ðærof forstæl oððe wilddeor abiton, ic hit forgeald. Daeges & nihtes ic swanc, on haetan & on cyle & on watccan.
(Have I been with you now for twenty winters? Your herd were not barren, nor did I eat of them. Whatsoever someone stole or wild beasts devoured, I paid for it. Days and nights I toiled, in heat and in cold & in wake.)
And the verb appears in Beowulf, lines 81b–85, where the narrator foreshadows the destruction of Heorot:
Sele hlifade
heah ond horngeap; heaðowylma bad,
laðan liges— ne wæs hit lenge þa gen
þæt se ecghete aþumsweoran
æfter wælniðe wæcnan scolde.(The hall towered, high and horn-gabled; it awaited battle-surges, hostile flames—it would not be long until sword-hate would waken deadly hostility between son-in-law and father-in-law.)
It’s a short jump from a state of consciousness to a turn at watch or a vigil. We see this sense by the early Middle English period. For instance, the sense of a funeral vigil appears in the poem The Story of Genesis and Exodus, which was written c.1250:
Sum on, sum ðre, sum .vii. nigt,
Sum .xxx., sum .xii. moneð rigt,
And sum euerilc wurðen ger,
Ðor quiles ðat he wunen her,
Don for ðe dede chirche-gong,
Elmesse-gifte and messe-song,
And ðat is on ðe weches stede.
Wel him mai ben [ð]at wel it dede!([For] some one, some three, some seven nights, some thirty, some twelve months [are] right, and some are honored every year. While he is present here, attend church, perform alms-giving and mass-song for the dead, and that is standing in the wakes. Well may he be who does it well!)
As mentioned above, the nautical wake is a different word altogether. It’s a much later addition to the language, recorded in the sixteenth century, although its oral use in English may be older. It comes from the Old Norse vök, meaning hole or opening. Originally it referred to a break in an ice sheet caused by a passing ship, later extended to refer to the waves caused by a ship moving through water.
The Oxford English Dictionary, in a century-old entry, has an early sixteenth-century citation that reads:
No ship to ride in another's walk.
The OED gives the source as London, British Library, Harley MS 309, fol. 4. The text in question would seem to be the c.1530 A Booke of Orders for the Warre, Both by Sea & Land, penned by Thomas Audley. This text has never been published in full, and digital images of this manuscript are not available, so I can provide no further context for this snippet.
A clearer sixteenth-century use of wake in the nautical sense does appear in an account of Robert Dudley’s 1594 expedition to the West Indies. The account is penned by a Captain Wyatt, who was a soldier on the expedition. His first name may have been Thomas. The account appears to have been written shortly after the return to England:
But passinge the straighte wee bare awaie north and by east for some two daies as the winde woulde suffer us, but after altered that course and bare for the coste of Florida, a more westernlie course, to lie in the wake of the fleet of the West Indies bownde for Spaine.
Sources:
Crawford, Samuel John. The Old English Version of the Heptateuch. Early English Text Society, O.S. 160. London: Oxford UP, 1922, 162–63.
Fulk, R.D., Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, eds. Klaeber’s Beowulf, fourth edition. Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 2008, lines 81b–85.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. wake, n., wacche, n.
Morris, Richard, ed. The Story of Genesis and Exodus, second edition (1873). Early English Text Society, O.S. 7. New York: Greenwood Press, 1996, lines 2461–67, 70. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 444.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. wake, n.1, wake, v., waken, v., wake, n.2.
Wyatt, Thomas[?]. “Robert Dudley’s Voyage to the West Indies, Narrated by Capt. Wyatt” (c.1595). The Voyage of Robert Dudley. George F. Warner, ed. London: Hakluyt Society, 1899, 52. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Photo credit: Stromeyer and Wyman, 1894. Public domain image.