Saints and Priests!
Holy wells are everywhere in Ireland. People make little piles of stones, as
they pray, that will be counted at the last day, and the prayers reckoned up.
Some of them tell stories, thought there are never any martyrs in them. (The
Archbishop of Cashel once said, "Our people may be barbarous, but that have never
lifted their hands against God's saints; but now that a people have come amongst us
who know how to make thing [this was just after the English invasion], we shall
have martyr's plentifully.")
The bodies of saints are fastidious things. At a place called "Four-mile-Water",
in Wexfort, there is an old graveyard filled with saints. Once it was on the
other side of the river, but a rogue was buried there, and the whole graveyard
moved across in the night, leaving the rogue-corpse in solitude. It would have
been easier to move just the rogue-corpse, but they were saints and had to do
things in style!
:o)
