“Ay!” said Father Eustace, “it is indeed his chiefest magazine of artillery, when he inspireth presumptuous and daring men to set forth their own opinions and expositions of Holy Writ. But though thus abused, the Scriptures are the source of our salvation, and are no more to be reckoned unholy, because of these rash men's proceedings, than a powerful medicine is to be contemned, or held poisonous, because bold and evil leeches have employed it to the prejudice of their patients. With the permission of your reverence, I would that this matter were looked into more closely. I will myself visit the Tower of Glendearg ere I am many hours older, and we shall see if any spectre or white woman of the wild will venture to interrupt my journey or return. Have I your reverend permission and your blessing?” he added, but in a tone that appeared to set no great store by either.
“Thou hast both, my brother,” said the Abbot; but no sooner had Eustace left the apartment, than Boniface could not help breaking on the willing ear of the Sacristan his sincere wish, that any spirit, black, white, or gray, would read the adviser such a lesson, as to cure him of his presumption in esteeming himself wiser than the whole community.
“I wish him no worse lesson,” said the Sacristan, “than to go swimming merrily down the river with a ghost behind, and Kelpies, night-crows, and mud-eels, all waiting to have a snatch at him.
Merrily swim we, the moon shines bright!
Good luck to your fishing, whom watch you to-night?”
“Brother Philip,” said the Abbot, “we exhort thee to say thy prayers, compose thyself, and banish that foolish chant from thy mind;—it is but a deception of the devil's.”
“I will essay, reverend Father,” said the Sacristan, “but the tune hangs by my memory like a bur in a beggar's rags; it mingles with the psalter—the very bells of the convent seem to repeat the words, and jingle to the tune; and were you to put me to death at this very moment, it is my belief I should die singing it—'Now swim we merrily'—it is as it were a spell upon me.”
He then again began to warble
“Good luck to your fishing.”
And checking himself in the strain with difficulty, he exclaimed, “It is too certain—I am but a lost priest! Swim we merrily—I shall sing it at the very mass—Wo is me! I shall sing all the remainder of my life, and yet never be able to change the tune!”
The honest Abbot replied, “he knew many a good fellow in the same condition;” and concluded the remark with “ho! ho! ho!” for his reverence, as the reader may partly have observed, was one of those dull folks who love a quiet joke.