* The person who serves mass, as it is called, is he
who makes the responses to the priest during that
ceremony. As the mass is said in Latin the serving of
it must necessarily fall upon many who are ignorant of
that language, and whose pronunciation of it is, of
course, extremely ludicrous.
“Very well,” the rest replied; “try that Ned; give it the best and ginteelest grammar you have, and maybe it may thrate us dacent.”
Now it so happened that, in my schoolboy days, I had joined a class of young fellows who were learning what is called the “Sarvin' of Mass” and had impressed it so accurately on a pretty retentive memory, that I never forgot it. At length, Ned pulled, out his beads, and bedewed himself most copiously with the holy water. He then shouted out, with a voice which resembled that of a man in an ague fit, “Dom-i-n-us vo-bis-cum?” “Et cum spiritu tuo,” I replied, in a husky sepulchral tone, from behind the coffin. As soon as I uttered these words, the whole crowd ran back instinctively with fright; and Ned got so weak, that they were obliged to support him.
“Lord have marcy on us!” said Ned; “hoys, isn't it an awful thing to speak to a spirit? my hair is like I dunna what, it's sticking up so stiff upon my head.”
“Spake to it in English, Ned,” said they, till we hear what it will say. Ax it does anything trouble it; or whether its sowl's in Purgatory.”
“Wouldn't it be betther,” observed another, “to ax it who murthered it; maybe it wants to discover that?”
“In the—na-me of Go-o-d-ness,” said Ned, down to me, “what are you?”
“I'm the soul,” I replied in the same voice, “of the pedlar that was murdered on the bridge below.”
“And—who—was—-it, sur, wid—submission, that—murdhered—you?”
To this I made no reply.