PREFACE.

Perhaps no people ever gave such free rein to the imagination with regard to the infernal regions as did the Irish. It began with St. Fursa, whose story was known to Christendom through Bede, and Adamnan's Vision [he died about 704] is known over Europe. The last to let himself go in this way was Keating. See the amazing alliterative description in his "Three Shafts of Death," Leabhar III. alt 10.

It is curious to find a Mayo peasant reproducing a little of this racial characteristic in the present poem. I often heard of this piece and made many attempts to get it, interviewing several people who I was told had got it, but I failed to get more than a few lines. My friend, John Mac Neill, wrote down for me the present version word for word from the recitation of Michael Mac Ruaidhri, but it is obviously only fragmentary. It is full (in the original, both prose and verse) of curious words and forms, and the periphrasis the "Virgin's Garb" for the scapular is curious.

For the original, see "Religious Songs of Connacht," vol. II., p. 134.

THE STORY.

There was a Roman Catholic girl at service in a minister's house, and she was wearing the Virgin Mary's garb (i.e., a scapular). She once was getting ready to go to Mass, and when she was washing herself she took the garb off her, and laid it on one side. The minister's son came in, and he began rummaging (?) backwards and forwards through the room, and he met the garb. He caught it up in his hand and observed it closely. He put it round his neck, and when the girl turned about she saw the garb on the minister's son, and she got very furious. She gave a step forward and she tore the garb off his neck. She began railing at him and abusing him. She told him that it was not right nor fitting for a man of his religion to lay hold of that garb in his hand, seeing that he had a hatred and a loathing of the glorious Virgin, "and," says she to him, "since it has happened that you have laid hold of the blessed garb, unless you fast next Friday in eric for your sin, one sight of the country of the heavens you shall never see."

Grief and great unhappiness came over the minister's son at the abuse the girl gave him, and he told her that he would fast the Friday.

It was well, and it was not ill. When the minister's son went to sleep that night he got a fit of sickness, and he was very bad in the morning, and he told his mother that he would not let anyone next nor near him except the servant girl, and that he hoped that he would not be long in the fit of sickness.

There was nobody attending him but the girl, because he had a full determination to fast through the Friday. He knew very well that if his mother were coming into the room he would have to eat some food from her, and that is the reason he would not let his mother in.

When the Friday came he never tasted bit nor sup throughout the day.

On the morning of Saturday his mother asked the girl how he was getting on. The girl said that he was going on nicely [literally, "coming to land"]. But when the girl went in at the hour of twelve o'clock in the day he was a corpse, and there came a great dispiritedness [literally, "much-drowning"] over the girl, and she began crying. She went out and told his mother that he was dead.

The story went from mouth to mouth, and one person said to another that it was the girl who had killed him; and they did not know what awful death they would give her.

There was a heap of turf over against the kitchen, and they tied the girl with a chain, fastened in an iron staple that was at the gable of the house, and as soon as ever they would have the body buried they were to put oil and grease on the turf, and give it fire, to burn and to roast the girl.

On Monday morning when they went into the room to put the corpse into the coffin, the minister's son was there alive and alert, in his bed; and he told them the vision that he had seen.

He saw, he said, the fires of Purgatory, the mastiffs of Hell, and the great Devil, Judas, and he told them that it was the glorious Virgin who saved him, and who got him his pardon. She asked it of a request of her One-Son to put him into the world again to teach the people, and she got that request for him; and if it had not been that he had worn the garb of the Virgin [though] only for a moment, when he was on earth, he would not have seen one sight of the country of the heavens for ever; but it was that which saved him from the lowest depths of hell.

He spent [after that] seven years in the world teaching people, and telling them the right religion, and all his family turned Catholics, and it was the minister's son who composed the dÁn or poem.