Irish Blessings for the Dead

These are the words Irish speakers use when someone dies: said at a wake, written in a sympathy card, cut into a headstone. Most are prayers rather than blessings in the strict sense, a blessing is offered to someone living, and these ask something of God on behalf of someone who cannot be addressed any more.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam is the phrase most people are looking for. It asks that the soul be at God's right hand, and it changes with the gender of the person remembered: a anam for a man, a hanam for a woman. That is grammar rather than dialect, and getting it wrong is the single most common error on Irish memorial wording.

Alongside the prayers are proverbs about grief and mortality, which Irish treats with less euphemism than English does. Níl cara ag cumha ach cuimhne (grief has no friend but memory) is the kind of line that belongs on a memorial card precisely because it does not console.

Wording that will be carved or printed is worth checking twice. Every entry here shows its source, and the fadas matter: they are not decoration and a missing one makes a different word.