Coronach
Scottish Gaelic equivalent of the Goll
A coronach (also written coranich, corrinoch, coranach, cronach, etc.) is the Scottish Gaelic equivalent of the Gol, being the third part of a round of keening, the traditional improvised singing at a death, wake or funeral in the Highlands of Scotland and in Ireland. Though observers have reported hearing such songs in Ireland or in the Scottish Highlands, and melodies have been noted down and printed since the 18th century, audio recordings are rare; not only was the practice dying out or being suppressed through the 19th century, but it was also considered by its practitioners to have been a very personal and spiritual practice, not suitable for performance or recording.
The Scottish border ballad The Bonny Earl of Murray is supposedly composed in the tradition of the coronach.
Schubert's Opus 52 No 4 (D 836), which uses words from Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake in an arrangement for female choir with piano accompaniment, bears the title Coronach.
In popular culture
Progressive rock group Jethro Tull released, with Dee Palmer, a single called "Coronach" in 1986. The single was used as the theme tune to the Channel 4 programme "The Blood Of The British".
Melodic death metal band Eternal Tears of Sorrow have a song entitled "Coronach" on their 1998 album, Vilda Mánnu.
Death metal band Hate Eternal have an instrumental song entitled "Coronach" as the last song on their 2008 album, Fury and Flames. (The album as a whole is dedicated to Jared Anderson, a deceased friend and former bandmate of band leader Erik Rutan.)
Scottish black/speed metal band Hellripper have released an album titled Coronach.
References
Chisholm, Hugh, ed.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Coronach” as scottish Gaelic equivalent of the Goll. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5172145. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1986, 1998 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Coronach” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.