THE FRIARS OF URLAUR.
PREFACE.
There is scarcely another country in Europe, outside perhaps of a part of Switzerland and the Tyrol, in which there is the same veneration for purity and female chastity as in the Irish-speaking provinces of Ireland. In the pathetic and well-known song which begins "tá mé sínte ar do thuamba," "I am stretched upon thy tomb," the man who was in love with the maiden who had died says:
The priests and the friars
Wear faces of gloom
At me loving a maiden
And she cold in her tomb.
I would lie on your grave-sod
To shield you from rain,
This the thought of you there, love,
Has numbed me with pain.
When my people are thinking
That I am asleep,
It is on your cold grave, love,
My vigil I keep.
With desire I pine
And my bosom is torn,
You were mine, you were mine,
From your childhood my storeen.
But the mourner is not left entirely without comfort when he remembers the purity of her who had died:
You remember the night
'Neath the thorn on the wold.
When the heavens were freezing
And all things were cold.
Now thanks be to Jesus,
No tempter came o'er you,
And your maidenhood's crown
Is a beacon before you.