Irish Folk Tales (26 page)

What-a-way I got to Tallaght I do not know; but Father Larkin came to me to the door and brought me in. I told him my trouble. He was not for doing anything. He told me it was not his business to attend on the sick. I must go to hospital, he said, like the doctors told me. But I held his sleeve and would not let him go. I got to my knees and pled with him not to turn me out in the trouble that was on me. I was near crying.

“It lies with God,” says he. “We will ask Saint Dominic to put in a word for us.” He brought a statue of Saint Dominic and set it before me to put me in mind of him. Then I knelt, and he read over me a long office from out of his book. He advised me to go to confession then; and I did it. As I was going away he told me to pray hard and ask Saint Dominic to put in a word, and to take the old rags off my arm and throw them at the butt of a bush. I done all he told me, and the next day I was cured forever. Cured forever, may God be thanked, and thank him too. Aye, the Man up there is the
right
doctor. If you suffer enough and do your best, He has the pity and He has the cure.

Aye, sir, there is a power in prayer. It gets into a thing and stays in a thing. It is like the tempering of a plow-shoe. The share looks the same after it’s treated as before, but the nature of it is changed.

H
ELL AND HEAVEN

I have seen Hell myself. I had a sight of it one time in a vision. It had a very high wall around it, all of metal, and an archway, and a straight walk into it, just like what ’ud be leading into a gentleman’s orchard, but the edges were not trimmed with box, but with red-hot metal. And inside the wall there were cross-walks, and I’m not sure what there was to the right, but to the left there were five great furnaces, and they full of souls kept there with great chains. So I turned short and went away, and in turning I looked again at the wall, and I could see no end to it.

And another time I saw Purgatory. It seemed to be in a level place, and no walls around it, but it all one bright blaze, and the souls standing in it. And they suffer near as much as in Hell, only there are no devils with them there, and they have the hope of Heaven.

And I heard a call to me from there, “Help me to come out o’ this!” And when I looked it was a man I used to know in the army, an Irishman, and from this county, and I believe him to be a descendant of King O’Connor of Athenry.

So I stretched out my hand first, but then I called out, “I’d be burned in the flames before I could get within three yards of you.” So then he said, “Well, help me with your prayers,” and so I do.

And Father Connellan says the same thing, to help the dead with your prayers, and he’s a very clever man to make a sermon, and has a great deal of cures made with the Holy Water he brought back from Lourdes.

T
HE WOLF’S PROPHECY

It chanced one day not long after the coming of the Gall from England into Ireland, there was a priest making his way through a wood of Meath. And there came a man fornenst him and bade him for the love of God to come with him to confess his wife that was lying sick near that place.

So the priest turned with him and it was not long before he heard groaning and complaining as would be heard from a woman, but when he
came where she was lying it was a wolf he saw before him on the ground. The priest was afeared when he saw that and he turned away; but the man and the wolf spoke with him and bade him not to be afeared but to turn and to confess her. Then the priest took heart and blessed him and sat down beside her.

And the wolf spoke to him and made her confession to the priest and he anointed her. And when they had that done, the priest began to think in himself that she that had that mislikeness upon her and had grace to speak, might likely have grace and the gift of knowledge in other things; and he asked her about the strangers that were come into Ireland, and what way it would be with them.

And it is what the wolf said: “It was through the sin of the people of this country Almighty God was displeased with them and sent that race to bring them into bondage, and so they must be until the Gall themselves will be encumbered with sin. And at that time the people of Ireland will have power to put on them the same wretchedness for their sins.”

T
HE THREE QUESTIONS

It was this codger and he was hired as a herdsboy to a bishop. Things were bad in Ireland at the time: the enemy had come and conquered the country and took the land and was killing all before them, priest and people.

So this evening the herdsboy come home and he seen the bishop walking up and down and looking very down-in-the-mouth.

“My Lord Bishop,” says the herdsboy, “what ails you? You look very downhearted?”

“I’m to die in the morning,” says the bishop.

“How is that?” says the herdsboy.

“I’m to lose me head,” says the bishop. “The chief that took over this country,” he says, “sent for me this morning and give me three questions to answer by the morra morning and if I’m not fit he’s to take the head off me.”

“What’s the three questions, my lord?” says the herdsboy. “I might be fit to help.”

“You could not,” says the bishop. “You might only lose your own head as well.”

Anyway he got the bishop to tell him, and the herdsboy said that he would go in place of the bishop next morning and to leave all to him.

“You’ll only lose your head, too,” says the bishop.

Morning come and the herdsboy set off and meets this big fellow and stands before him.

“Who are you?” says he.

“I’m herdsboy to the Lord Bishop,” says he.

“Why didn’t he come himself?” says he.

“The Lord Bishop didn’t think it worth his while,” says he, “to come himself to answer three simple questions.”

“Then if you’re not fit to answer them you’ll lose your head,” says this big fellow.

“Fair enough,” says the herdsboy.

“Here’s my first question then,” says the big fellow. “What’s the first thing I think of in the morning when I rise?”

“What you’ll eat,” says the herdsboy.

“That’s right,” says he. “Now here’s me second question: How many loads of sand are there round the shores of Ireland?”

“One,” says the herdsboy, “if you had a cart big enough to hold it.”

“Right,” says the big fellow. “And now here’s my third and last question: How much am I worth?”

“Twenty-nine pieces of silver,” says the herdsboy.

“How do you make that out?”

“Well, our Lord God Himself was sold for thirty pieces,” says the herdsboy, “and you can’t be as good as Him.”

And he got him and the bishop off.

T
HE FARMER’S ANSWERS