Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee: Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of; William Carleton, Volume ThreeCarleton, William
General
Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee: Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of; William Carleton, Volume Three
Carleton, William
Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Prefer Voltaire to Christ; sow the wind, and reap the
whirlwind, as I have done--ha, ha, ha! Swim, world--swim about me! I
have lost the ways of Providence, and am dark! She awaits me; but I
broke the chain that galled us: yet it still rankles--still rankles!”
The unhappy man threw himself into a chair in a paroxysm of frenzied
agony. For more than an hour he sat in the same posture, until he became
gradually hardened into a stiff, lethargic insensibility, callous and
impervious to feeling, reason, or religion--an awful transition from a
visitation of conscience so terrible as that which he had just suffered.
At length he arose, and by walking moodily about, relapsed into his
usual gloomy and restless character.
When Bartley went home, he communicated to his wife Father Philip's
intention of calling on the following day, to hear a correct account of
the Lianhan Shee.
“Why, thin,” said she, “I'm glad of it, for I intinded myself to go to
him, any way, to get my new scapular consecrated. How-an'-ever, as he's
to come, I'll get a set of gospels for the boys an' girls, an' he can
consecrate all when his hand's in. Aroon, Bartley, they say that man's
so holy that he can do anything--ay, melt a body off the face o' the
earth, like snow off a ditch. Dear me, but the power they have is
strange all out!”
“There's no use in gettin' him anything to ate or dhrink,” replied
Bartley; “he wouldn't take a glass o' whiskey once in seven years.
Throth, myself thinks he's a little too dry; sure he might be holy
enough, an' yet take a sup of an odd time. There's Father Felix, an'
though we all know he's far from bein' so blessed a man as him, yet he
has friendship an' neighborliness in him, an' never refuses a glass in
rason.”
“But do you know what I was tould about Father Philip, Bartley?”
“I'll tell you that afther I hear it, Mary, my woman; you won't expect
me to tell what I don't know?--ha, ha, ha!”
“Behave, Bartley, an' quit your jokin' now, at all evints; keep it till
we're talkin' of somethin' else, an' don't let us be committin' sin,
maybe, while we're spakin' of what we're spakin' about; but they say
it's as thrue as the sun to the dial:--the Lent afore last itself it
was,--he never tasted mate or dhrink durin' the whole seven weeks! Oh,
you needn't stare! it's well known by thim that has as much sinse
as you--no, not so much as you'd carry on the point o' this
knittin'-needle. Well, sure the housekeeper an' the two sarvants
wondhered--faix, they couldn't do less--an' took it into their heads
to watch him closely; an' what do you think--blessed be all the saints
above!--what do you think they seen?”
“The Goodness above knows; for me--I don't.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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