The Story. . . . .a post script. . .

In passing I used the term "to kean" .. . more correctly spelled "to keen". . . .a wailing, piercing crying, mournful sounds, used traditionally at times of death and funerals. . . especially among the Irish and Middle-Eastern countries.  Here is an except from an article on this style of grief-expression. . . 

The Irish Funeral Cry (the Ullaloo, Keeners and Keening at Irish Funerals)

From The Dublin Penny Journal, Volume 1, Number 31, January 26, 1833

The well known custom so long used in this country, of keening, or lamenting over the dead, is of the most remote antiquity. History informs us, that it was known to the Greeks and Romans, who, however, seem to have borrowed it from the Eastern nations, among whom probably it had its origin; and from the Scriptures we learn that it was practised among the Israelites. Dr. O'Brien tells us, that the word in the Irish language, as originally and more correctly written, is cine, and not, as modern orthoepists have it, caoine; and this makes it almost identical with the Hebrew word cina, which signifies lamentation or weeping with clapping of hands. The learned Jezreel Jones, in speaking of the Shillah or Tarmazeght, a language or dialect of the inhabitants of the mountainous part of south-western Barbary, in a letter to John Chamberlayn, dated "Westmonasterii, 24 Decembr. 1714," declares that "the Shilhenses have the same custom as the Arabs, the Jews, and the Irish, of lamenting over the dead, uttering various cries of grief, tearing their hair, and asking the deceased why did he die? why did he leave them? and desiring that death would seize them also, in order that they might rejoin him whom they lamented."

This is the url to the full article. . . 
http://www.libraryireland.com/articles/IrishFuneralCryDPJ1-31/index.php