Here he stood, and looked upon the green winding margin of the streamlet—but its song he heard not. With the workings of a guilty conscience, the beautiful in nature can have no association. He looked up the glen, but its picturesque windings, soft vistas, and wild underwood mingling with gray rocks and taller trees, all mellowed by the moonbeams, had no charms for him. He maintained a profound silence—but it was not the silence of peace or reflection. He endeavored to recall the scenes of the past day, but could not bring them back to his memory. Even the fiery tide of thought, which, like burning lava, seared his brain a few moments before, was now cold and hardened.
He could remember nothing. The convulsion of his mind was over, and his faculties were impotent and collapsed.
In this state he unconsciously retraced his steps, and had again reached the paddock adjoining his house, where, as he thought, the figure of his paramour stood before him. In a moment his former paroxysm returned, and with it the gloomy images of a guilty mind, charged with the extravagant horrors of brain-stricken madness.
“What!” he exclaimed, “the band still on your forehead! Tear it off!”
He caught at the form as he spoke, but there was no resistance to his grasp. On looking again towards the spot it had ceased to be visible. The storm within him arose once more; he rushed into the kitchen, where the fire blazed out with fiercer heat; again he imagined that the thunder came to his ears, but the thunderings which he heard were only the voice of conscience. Again his own footsteps and his voice sounded in his fancy as the footsteps and voices of fiends, with which his imagination peopled the room. His state and his existence seemed to him a confused and troubled dream; he tore his hair—threw it on the table—and immediately started back with a hollow groan; for his locks, which but a few hours before had been as black as a raven's wing, were now white as snow!
On discovering this, he gave a low but frantic laugh. “Ha, ha, ha!” he exclaimed; “here is another mark—here is food for despair. Silently, but surely, did the hand of God work this, as proof that I am hopeless! But I will bear it; I will bear the sight! I now feel myself a man blasted by the eye of God Himself! Ha, ha, ha! Food for despair! Food for despair!”
Immediately he passed into his own room, and approaching the looking-glass beheld a sight calculated to move a statue. His hair had become literally white, but the shades of his dark complexion, now distorted by terror and madness, flitted, as his features worked under the influence of his tremendous passions, into an expression so frightful, that deep fear came over himself. He snatched one of his razors, and fled from the glass to the kitchen. He looked upon the fire, and saw the white ashes lying around its edge.
“Ha!” said he, “the light is come! I see the sign. I am directed, and I will follow it. There is yet one hope. The immolation! I shall be saved, yet so as by fire. It is for this my hair has become white;—the sublime warning for my self-sacrifice! The color of ashes!—white—white! It is so! I will sacrifice my body in material fire, to save my soul from that which is eternal! But I had anticipated the sign. The self-sacrifice is accepted!”*
* As the reader may be disposed to consider the nature
of the priest's death an unjustifiable stretch of
fiction, I have only to say in reply, that it is no
fiction at all. It is not, I believe, more than forty,
or perhaps fifty, years since a priest committed his
body to the flames, for the purpose of saving his soul
by an incrematory sacrifice. The object of the suicide
being founded on the superstitious belief, that a
priest guilty of great crimes possesses the privilege
of securing salvation by self-sacrifice. We have heard
two or three legends among the people in which this
principle predominated. The outline of one of these,
called “The Young Priest and Brian Braar,” was as
follows:—
A young priest on his way to the College of Valladolid,
in Spain, was benighted; but found a lodging in a small
inn on the roadside. Here he was tempted by a young
maiden of great beauty, who, in the moment of his
weakness, extorted from him a bond signed with his
blood, binding himself to her forever. She turned out
to be an evil spirit: and the young priest proceeded to
Valladolid with a heavy heart, confessed his crime to
the Superior, who sent him to the Pope, who sent him to
a Friar in the County of Armagh, called Brian Braar,
who sent him to the devil. The devil, on the strength
of Brian Braar's letter, gave him a warm reception,
held a cabinet council immediately, and laid the
despatch before his colleagues, who agreed that the
claimant should get back his bond from the brimstone
lady who had inveigled him. She, however, obstinately
refused to surrender it, and stood upon her bond, until
threatened with being thrown three times into Brian
Braar's furnace. This tamed her: the man got his bond,
and returned to Brian Braar on earth. Now Brian Braar
had for three years past abandoned God, and taken to
the study of magic with the devil; a circumstance which
accounts for his influence below. The young priest,
having possessed himself of his bond, went to Lough
Derg to wash away his sins; and Brian Braar, having
also become penitent, the two worthies accompanied each
other to the lake. On entering the boat, however, to
cross over to the island, such a storm arose as drove
them back. Brian assured his companion that he himself
was the cause of it.
“There is now,” said he, “but one more chance for me;
and we must have recourse to it.” He then returned
homewards, and both had reached a hill-side near
Bryan's house, when the latter desired the young priest
to remain there a few minutes, and he would return to
him; which he did with a hatchet in his hand.
“Now,” said he, “you must cut me into four quarters,
and mince my body into small bits, then cast them into
the air, and let them go with the wind.”
The priest, after much entreaty, complied with his
wishes, and returned to Lough Derg, where he afterwards
lived twelve years upon one meal of bread and water per
diem. Having thus purified himself, he returned home;
but, on passing the hill where he had minced the Friar,
he was astonished to see the same man celebrating mass,
attended by a very penitential looking congregation of
spirits.
“Ah,” said Brian Braar, when mass was over, “you are
now a happy man. With regard to my state for the
voluntary sacrifice I have made of myself, I am to be
saved; but I must remain on this mountain until the Day
of Judgment.” So saying, he disappeared.
There is little to be said about the superstition of
the Lianhan Shee, except that it existed as we have
drawn it, and that it is now fading fast away. There is
also something appropriate in associating the heroine
of this little story with the being called the Lianhan
Shee, because, setting the superstition aside, any
female who fell into her crime was called Lianhan
Shee. Lianhan Shee an Sogarth signifies a priest's
paramour, or, as the country people say, “Miss.” Both
terms have now nearly become obsolete.
We must here draw a veil over that which ensued, as the description of it would be both unnatural and revolting. Let it be sufficient to say, that the next morning he was found burned to a cinder, with the exception of his feet and legs, which remained as monuments of, perhaps, the most dreadful suicide that ever was committed by man. His razor, too, was found bloody, and several clots of gore were discovered about the hearth; from which circumstances it was plain that he had reduced his strength so much by loss of blood, that when he committed himself to the flames, he was unable, even had he been willing, to avoid the fiery and awful sacrifice of which he made himself the victim. If anything could deepen the the impression of fear and awe, already so general among the people, it was the unparalleled nature of his death. Its circumstances are yet remembered in the parish and county wherein it occurred—for it is no fiction, gentle reader! and the titular bishop who then presided over the diocese, declared, that while he lived, no person bearing the unhappy man's name should ever be admitted to the clerical order.