Then the great tree lowered her branches
At hearing the high command,
And she plucked the fruit that it offered,
Herself with her gentle hand.
Loud shouted the good St. Joseph,
He cast himself on the ground,
"Go home and forgive me, Mary,
To Jerusalem I am bound;
I must go to the holy city,
And confess my sin profound."
Then out spake the gentle Mary,
She spake with a gentle voice,
"I shall not go home, O Joseph,
But I bid thee at heart rejoice,
For the King of Heaven shall pardon
The sin that was not of choice."
THE STUDENT WHO LEFT COLLEGE.
PREFACE.
The following curious story has parallels in many countries. It is probably founded upon the verse in II. Peter iii. 8. "Quia unus dies apud Dominum sicut mille anni et mille anni sicut unus dies"—"for a thousand years are with the Lord as one day, and one day as a thousand years." It need not, however, be founded upon any Christian conception, for the purely Pagan story of Oisín or Ossian in the "Land of the Ever-Young" was known all over Ireland. Oisín thought he had spent only a short time in the Happy Other-World, but when he returned to Ireland he found he had been away for 300 years, and every one he knew had died.
The reciter had forgotten what the name of the monastery was, but I believe it to have been the ancient abbey and school at Killarney, now in ruins. I have heard that the things told in this story, or one similar to it, were supposed to have happened there.
The river with water as red as blood reminds us of Thomas of Ercildoune's experience when rapt away into faërie by the queen.