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We have, or had, a saint in Castle Haven parish, Saint Barrahane was his name, and his Well of Baptism is still honoured and has the usual unattractive tributes of rag on its over-shadowing thorn-bush. The well is in a deep, wooded glen, just above a graveyard that is probably of an equal age with it. The graveyard lies on the shore, under the lee of that castle that stood the bombardment from Queen Elizabeth’s sea captains; the sea has made more than one sally to invade the precincts, but the protecting sea wall, though it has been undermined and sometimes thrown down, has not, so far, failed of its office. It is considered a good and fortunate place to be buried in. All my people lie there, and I think there should be luck for those who lie in a place of such ancient sanctity. It is held that the last person who is buried in it has to keep the graveyard in order, and—in what way is not specified—to attend to the wants of his neighbours. I can well remember seeing a race between two funerals, as to which should get their candidate to the graveyard first. A very steep and winding lane leads down to the sea, and down it thundered the carts with the coffins, and their following cortéges.
In the next parish to Castle Haven there is a graveyard
E. Œ. SOMERVILLE ON TARBRUSH.
lonelier even than that of Saint Barrahane. Like most of the ancient burial places it is situated close to the sea, probably to permit of the funerals taking place by boat, in times when roads hardly existed. There, at the top of the cliffs, among the ruins of a church, and among the dreadful wreck of tombs too old even for tradition to whisper whose once they were, there took place, not long ago, the funeral of a certain woman, who was well known and well loved. I was told of an old beggar-woman who walked many miles to see the last of a friend.
“She rose early, and she hasted, and she was at the gate of the graveyard when the funeral was coming,” another woman told me; “an’ when she seen them, and they carrying in the corpse, she let the owld cloak back from her. And when she seen the corpse pass her, she threw up the hands, and says she, ‘That your journey may thrive wid ye!’”
That journey that we think to be so long and dark and difficult. Perhaps we may find, as in so many of our other journeys, that it is the preparation and the setting forth that are the hardest part of it.