Herminie Templeton

“ And wouldn't it have been a good thing, too, if Roderick O'Carrioll, and the monks of Saint Bride with him, could have found untroubled graves in consecrated ground? But an unjust curse is a dreadful thing. And through five hundred years, as sure as the night of All Souls' came, the friars of the abbey, and the lord of the castle, did bitter penance for their sin.
The dead make no account of time, they say—and, indeed, why should they?—and so one generation followed another generation, and the story of the curse came down with the years and the weary penance was still unfinished. ”

“ There isn't a doubt but what Michael, if he had had the strength, would have opened his lips and prayed aloud with the monks, for he remembered the legend well of how the tormented spirits needed only a living voice to join its prayer with their own, the way they would have rest in quiet graves, but the fear was heavy on the poor man, and so he couldn't do that. ”

“ However, it's little the O'Carrioll cared for near neighbors, and it's little he bothered the monks with his visiting, and as for the monks, it's far from being sorry the holy men were to have the O'Carrioll keeping that way to himself.
A fierce, proud man was Black Roderick, and the greatest pleasure he took in life was in leading a hundred or two of his spears over the walls of some nobleman's castle and leaving its roof glowing blood-red against the midnight sky. ”

“ No one could say a word against Katie—she was thrifty, she was clean, she was hard-working—only she used to be faulting Michael, and faulting him, and faulting him. If the decent man happened home of an evening with a sign of a little drop of drink on him, one would think from the way Katie went on that it was after robbing a church he was.
Well, one day Michael said to himself that he'd bear it no longer, so he up and went to his wife's relations, especially her sisters' husbands, to ask their advice about what he should do. ”

“ Why, God rest their souls, they're dead a thousand years! That old ruin up on the cliff is where the monastery used to be. Troth and I must tell you of the monks of Saint Bride, or you'll never be able to rightly appreciate the terrible thing that happened to Michael Bresnahan that Hallowe'en night.
Do you see that high bare cliff beyant?—Aill Ruahd they do be calling it—well, in the days when the five kings ruled over Ireland—and many a year ago that was—Black Roderick O'Carrioll with three hundred of his fighting men lived perched upon the very pinpoint of the hill. ”

“ No, no, Michael, take my advice, be a wise lad, and do you go in there now to the old chapel, where no one will be seeing you, and take a matter of forty winks or so, the way you'll have a sober and a clear head going down to her while it is still in the light of the evening. ”

“ And what does the blundering lad do but stop the priest in the middle of the road and there make his bitter complaint. That was the rock Michael split on, for the clergyman, without a word of warning, up with his whip and hit Bresnahan two rousing welts over the legs, and then when the poor man took to his heels Father Driscoll galloped after, larruping Michael down the road and calling him such heart-scalding names that the very crows wouldn't pick his bones. ”

“ Though the dead can not pray for the dead, if one among the living say a prayer for the departed, then the dead may join his prayer to the living prayer, and so it makes one prayer, and they'll both be heard. ”

“ One morning six men lay dead in the castle of the O'Carrioll, and within the hour the master of the house, in the way that he would be ready if his own turn came, sent a quick messenger over for one of the monks of Saint Bride to come and shrive him. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1933, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 90 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”