The Bishop and the two friars fell to their prayers again. "O Lord, according to the abundance of Thy mercy, look mercifully upon her," said the Bishop. "Amen," said the friars. There came a little calm and the Bishop went over to the bed. Poor Patrick came to the other side of the bed, and it was not long until the woman opened her mouth and there came a host of dardeels out of it. Patrick let a screech and ran for fire to put on them. When he came back the woman was dead, and the dardeels gone.
The Bishop said prayers over her, and then he himself went away and the two friars, and Patrick went out to get women to wash the corpse, but when he came back the body was not to be found either up or down. There was a purse of gold round its neck, and the purse went with the body, and there is no account of either of them from that out.
Many was the story and version that the neighbours had about Patrick Kerwan's wife. Some of them say that the devil took her with him. Others said that the good people carried her away. At all events there is no account of her since.
At the end of a month after that the speckled disease (smallpox) broke out amongst the children and they all died. There was very great grief on Patrick. He was alone, by himself, without wife, without children, but he said: "Welcome be the will of God."
A short time after that, he sold all that he had and went into a monastery. He spent his life piously and died a happy death. May God grant us a good death and the life that is enduring.
THE BURIAL OF JESUS.
PREFACE.
The first time I heard this poem was at the Galway Feis many years ago. A poor old man, called the Cean-nuidhe Cóir (Canny Core) or Honest Merchant—I don't know what his real name was—recited it. I took him aside in the interval during the competitions and wrote the most of it down from his recitation. My friend, Eoghan O Neachtain, wrote the rest of it down for me from the old man's mouth later on, but with the greatest difficulty as he had lost his teeth and pronounced very badly. Neither of us ever heard the poem before, and it is obviously only a fragment of a long piece, now, I fear, hopelessly lost, in common with many others, once popular. Indeed, I have seen a copy of this poem written down by a man called Hessian some eighty years ago, who called it the Assire [=Aiseirghe], but it is hopelessly undecipherable. This curious piece refers to a story once so commonly known in Ireland that it may almost be said to have formed part of the regular account of the crucifixion. It is celebrated even more in Irish art than in Irish story and song. When examining a few years ago the remains of the beautiful abbey which gives to Ennis its Irish name of Mainistir na h-Innse, I saw where a portion of the stone carving had recently been laid bare, and there, as plain as though it had been carved yesterday, was a very spirited picture of the cock rising up out of the pot and getting ready to crow. This was included with the other symbols of the crucifixion. I have seen the same thing on old wooden crucifixes, and elsewhere. There seems to have been a body of legend in some way or other connecting the cock with the history of the Passion. A Coptic legend tells us that on the day of the betrayal a roasted cock had been served up to our Lord, who bade it rise up and follow Judas, who was then upon his way to make his bargain with the chief priests. The cock rose up and did what it was ordered, and brought back word to our Lord that the arch-traitor had sold Him, "and for this that cock shall enter Paradise." Thevonet Voyages II. 75, quoted in Journal for Apocrypha.