# The Monks of Saint Bride

Extracted from Collier's weekly, 1908 Jan 11, pp. 12–14. Accompanying illustrations by E. Blumenschein may be omitted.
Illustration: A shadowy procession of gray-robed monks
The Monks
of Saint Bride
Told in a Jaunting-Car on the Road Between Ballybeg and Ballymore
By HERMINIE TEMPLETON
THERE was a decent bit of a man, yer honor, named Michael Bresnahan, who till a few years ago lived over in that little fisher village under the cliff, and he had a good, sensible lump of a woman for a wife, named Katie.
No one could say a word against Katie—she was thrifty, she was clean, she was hard-working—only she used to be faulting Michael, and faulting him, and faulting him. If the decent man happened home of an evening with a sign of a little drop of drink on him, one would think from the way Katie went on that it was after robbing a church he was.
Well, one day Michael said to himself that he'd bear it no longer, so he up and went to his wife's relations, especially her sisters' husbands, to ask their advice about what he should do. They pitied him indeed—sure no one could do less—but all the counsel they could scrape together to give the unfortunate man was just the kind of encouragement relations always give.
“Arrah, God help ye, me poor man, and bear it the best ye can!”
Well, there wasn't much comfort in that, so Michael put in the next day going around asking the neighbors what he'd do with Katie, and every one freely gave the advice the neighbors always give under such circumstances: “Musha, God help ye, me poor man, and ye're a fool for standing it!”
Now, taking public advice on family matters soon grows into a pleasant habit with any one, so, after Michael had exhausted the cottages on both sides of the village street, he took the road in his hands, and was making his way down to Haggarty's public-house at the cross-roads when who should he meet up with, ambling along on the gray pony, but his Reverence Father John Driscoll.
“This is me chance to get in the first word before Katie sees his Reverence,” he thought
And what does the blundering lad do but stop the priest in the middle of the road and there make his bitter complaint. That was the rock Michael split on, for the clergyman, without a word of warning, up with his whip and hit Bresnahan two rousing welts over the legs, and then when the poor man took to his heels Father Driscoll galloped after, larruping Michael down the road and calling him such heart-scalding names that the very crows wouldn't pick his bones.
That same night Michael made up his mind to do something tremendous; so bright and early the next morning the desperate man slipped from the blue teapot on the dresser the last shilling in the house, and, taking the road in his hands again, off with him to Ballinderg to get the grand advice from Shiela McGuire, the fairy doctor. And the advice that Shiela gave him would raise the hair on your head.
“Hand me the shillin'! All Souls' night 'll be here soon, and whin it comes d'ye go up to the monastery of Saint Bride an' help the monks an' they'll help you.”
When Michael heard that same advice the cold sweat broke out on his forehead, for no man in five hundred years had ever been bold enough to face the monks of Saint Bride.
“Where are the monks of Saint Bride?” is it yer honor? Why, God rest their souls, they're dead a thousand years! That old ruin up on the cliff is where the monastery used to be. Troth and I must tell you of the monks of Saint Bride, or you'll never be able to rightly appreciate the terrible thing that happened to Michael Bresnahan that Hallowe'en night.
Do you see that high bare cliff beyant?—Aill Ruahd they do be calling it—well, in the days when the five kings ruled over Ireland—and many a year ago that was—Black Roderick O'Carrioll with three hundred of his fighting men lived perched upon the very pinpoint of the hill. Right opposite, on that other bold headland where you see the ruins lying tumbled, dwelt the far-famed Monks of Saint Bride. And just as you see it now, between their stout old monastery and the castle of the O'Carrioll, the blue sea curved in like the half of a cartwheel.
Barring these two habitations there wasn't another strong house within forty miles; but only the cottages of the cowherds and of the swineherds and the low mud huts of the kerns.
However, it's little the O'Carrioll cared for near neighbors, and it's little he bothered the monks with his visiting, and as for the monks, it's far from being sorry the holy men were to have the O'Carrioll keeping that way to himself.
A fierce, proud man was Black Roderick, and the greatest pleasure he took in life was in leading a hundred or two of his spears over the walls of some nobleman's castle and leaving its roof glowing blood-red against the midnight sky. But though half the province of Leinster hated and feared the O'Carrioll, it wasn't that way at all with him in his own household, for, whatever was the reason, with all his stern, cold ways there was many a man-at-arms who sat at the chief's table that would willingly have laid down his life to serve Black Roderick. But if the chief himself had any great liking for his men, he wasn't the one to be making much talk about it. And indeed they used to be saying that there was only one mortal man that he showed any fondness for and that same his only brother, the yellow-haired, pleasant-faced young Turlough. And it was no wonder for him to be fond of the lad the way he was, for a brighter-minded, comelier young fellow there wasn't to be found in the seven counties. Indeed, it's more like father and son the two men were than like brother and brother. All their days they lived that way together, with their foraging and their game and their hunting and their feasting, happy and contented enough I dare say, though it's little enough attention the two paid to prayers or to fasting or to any other pious thing. Nor at Christmas, nor Easter, nor on any other holy day did either of the two go next or near the monastery chapel of Saint Bride. Now what could any one expect from the likes of that but misfortune and bad luck?
Well, the misfortune came at last, and when it did a bitter, burning misfortune it was.
One black midnight the holy monks were awakened by a great noise of confused shouting and cheering that was passing along the road in the valley below them. And what should the good men see but the flare of a hundred torches held high by O'Carrioll's men above a dim crush of hard-driven cattle.
“The O'Carrioll is home from his raiding,” said Brother John. “I wonder who was the unfortunate that felt the edge of his sword.”
“God help him the night whoever he was,” sighed Brother Andrew. “And than isn't it the marvel that Heaven has spared the heartless spoiler so long!”
While the monks stood wondering that way what depredation Black Roderick was after doing, there suddenly fell a hard rapping upon the convent gate, and a voice strident as a trumpet startled the monastery.
“Open, open, I say! 'Tis the O'Carrioll bids ye!”
And the drawbridge was let down, indeed, and the gate was opened, as it needs must be, and then two shadowy horses crossed the wide moat and stumbled into the abbey court.
First of all came the O'Carrioll himself on the tall black horse that people used to be saying could fight as well as his master. And the figure of a woman is what Roderick carried in front of him, and she wrapped in his wide cloak; and at the black steed's haunches rode Turlough, the brother, and by the strange, wild look on his face the monks thought at first that maybe it was a bad wound that was on him and that it was for a leech the two men were coming.
“Come, Sir Abbot,” cried the dark man, “out with your book and marry the both of us here, for when this lady crosses my threshold I wish her to go as my wife. That much I'll do for her father's daughter.” So saying he leaped to the ground and stood beside the girl and lifted er hand in his.
And Brother Paul was telling the next day how when Black Roderick took the lady's hand young Turlough's face went deadly white and the lad's hand made a sudden reach toward the sword at his side; and sure every one saw how the colleen (it's little more than a child she was) tottered and would have fallen if the O'Carrioll himself had not held her up.
I never rightly heard the truth about the three of them, but I think that there must have been something that time between Turlough and the young colleen. Who was the lady and how came the friendship between herself and young Turlough was, we may be sure, more than a nine days' wonder at Saint Bride's.
One morning a rumor reached the monastery that the colleen was the O'Coffey's daughter, and that she had been stolen out of the West, but that couldn't be, for O'Coffey's daughter was being reared in France; and after that some pilgrims were saying that the lady was the child of O'Donavon from Munster, but if that was true half of Ireland would have been in arms against the O'Carrioll. So, one way and another, the matter was bothering the friars at their beads and distracting them at their vespers till they could get no good of their prayers, when lo and behold, one morning about three months after the wedding, an astonishing thing happened: the Lady O'Carrioll herself, and no other, came riding up to the monastery again. This time, however, she came hurrying alone up the winding path, her mist of brown hair streaming in the wind and a look of terror frozen on her white face. At the same time came galloping in furious pursuit Lord Roderick O'Carrioll.
“”Open and let me in,” she called to the warder. “I claim the protection of this holy place.”
And the draw was let down to her when they heard that cry, but when she rode over the bridge the O'Carrioll was at her heels, and when they drew bridle in the midst of the crowd of curious friars one horse's head was beside the other horse's head.
The man's eyes gleamed on her like coals of living fire, and what he said was:
“Is it to escape you thought you would! Return to your house and to your duty, shameless woman!”
The Lady O'Carrioll didn't answer him then, but slipped quickly down from the horse, and it's on her two bended knees she went before the abbot.
The old monk looked in stern amazement from the dark, threatening brow of the angry man to the death-white cheeks of the girl at his feet.
“Stop where you are, O'Carrioll,” was what he said as the chief dismounted, “and come not a foot nearer, for, though I'm a priest of God, now if you so much as lift a finger to this woman it's little help that sword you're striving to draw will be to ye then.”
At that the abbot turned, and it's what he called to the warder:
“Brother John, raise the drawbridge.” And while the bridge was clanking up a score of stalwart monks armed, some with staves, some with spears, and two or three with naked swords, came hurrying up and grouped themselves around their abbot.
“And now, Roderick O'Carrioll,” demanded the soldierly old friar, “what means this rude pursuit?”
“By the cross it's what it means, that she is a disobedient wife,” haughtily replied the O'Carrioll, “and it's more than that you shall not know!”
“It's more than that I shall know indeed,” said the abbot; “for unless you swear by the cross on your sword-hilt never to harm a hair of the woman's head, it's not one foot she'll stir beyond this gate.”
“Most willingly do I take that oath,” spoke the O'Carrioll, “though it's not through any dread of this nest of scurrying gray mice. An O'Carrioll never did anything yet through fear; but I'll take the oath you say to ease the fears of this woman.”
And straightway, holding up the gold hilt of his sword, he swore by it blunt and plain like a soldier to keep her safe from any hurt or harm or shame that might come through himself or through another.
The monks of Saint Bride never saw her again and for two months it's little they heard of her, and then a dark rumor crept over the valley. And when two cowherds stood together out on the lonely hills they whispered the rumor to each other, and when any two men were alone together in their currach on the ocean they talked of it and it's what they said:
“The O'Carrioll has reddened his hands with his wife and he has reddened his hands with his brother Turlough that she had the love for, and the both of them are lying beside each other cold and dead at the bottom of the sea.”
At last one day a fisherman found a lady's blue cloak washed up between two rocks, and it was the Lady O'Ca1rioll's gold-embroidered cloak they were saying.
Now when the abbot of Saint Bride heard this thing and of the way the sword oath that had been put upon the O'Carrioll was broken, it's great indeed the wrath that was on the good man, for such treachery never had been heard of before in all Ireland.
The evening of the day that the word was brought to him he called all the monks together in the chapel, and there they consulted one with the other what was a just and worthy punishment to put upon the O'Carrioll. It was the turn of midnight before they decided that and went to their cells. And then on the morning of the morrow, just when the great round sun was reddening the foreheads of the hills, they all gathered again on the east turret of monastery, and when the abbot found that they were all about him he fronted the castle of the O'Carrioll and raised his oaken cross. Then, with the cross, he cursed that house, and he cursed the chief of that house. And it wasn't the O'Carrioll alone he cursed, but he banned him and all who cleaved to him with the curse of sleepless nights, which is the most agonizing of all curses, and he doomed them with the curse of friendless days, which is the most terrible of all curses, and he cursed them with the blight of a quick-coming death, which is the surest of all curses. And he put excommunication upon the lord of the castle, so that he would be banished from out the ways of living men.
And no wonder it is, at all, at all, that quick and heavy that curse fell. For from that day out, the kerns began to steal away from Black Roderick's land, the way they were afraid of the curse; and the fighting men deserted him, at first by twos and threes, and then by scores; and then the women of the house crept away in the night; so that presently he that used to be counting five hundred spears was left with but a dozen or so of the old retainers.
And that is how Black Roderick's power went from him, so that he was forced at last to pay tribute to the O'Driscolls that he might save the roof of his castle from the torches of the MacDonoughs.
And that's the way it was with him when the red plague came sweeping up from Ath Cliath, as they used to be calling the city of Dublin then, and it leaving in its track no living man, woman, or child.
One morning six men lay dead in the castle of the O'Carrioll, and within the hour the master of the house, in the way that he would be ready if his own turn came, sent a quick messenger over for one of the monks of Saint Bride to come and shrive him. But the abbot sent a stern answer back, and it's what he said:
“Let Roderick O'Carrioll come himself to this monastery, and on his bare knees make public confession of the murder of his brother, and of his wife, and full acknowledgment of his other crimes, and then let him humbly take on himself the penance I'll impose, and it's no light penance that will be either; and let him not be sending here for a priest again, for it's to the chapel he himself must come, and it's my own tongue, and no other, that shall ask the forgiveness for him, and until I do that same it's unshriven he will be, and it's neither ease for his body, nor rest for his soul, he may expect in this world, or in the next.”
When the frightened messenger went back and told that, it's what the O'Carrioll answered:
Illustration: The figure of a woman is what Roderick carried in front of him
“It's a hard saying that is, and the curse they put on me I send back to them, and let it be laid against their souls that as I am innocent of the crime they say, they shall pray for me until I am blessed, whether in this world or in the next!”
The wor were no sooner out of his mouth than he felt the sickness of the plague on him, and he turned to the serving-men, and what said was:
“The hand of death is on me now, and after all I'd wish to die at peace with God so lay me on the litter there and carry me with what haste you can to the monastery of Saint Bride. And when they hear what I have to say, it's well I know they'll shrive me then.”
And the serving-men were loath to go, for the night was on, and it was All Souls' night, and wild with the wind, and the thunder, and the rain. But for love of the old times they took the master up between them at last, and it's how they carried him out into the darkness, and down into the valley, and by every short way toward the monastery.
By the time the serving-men had reached the path on the edge of the high cliff, which was half-way between the two places, they were as frightened as four shivering hares, and they set down the litter to rest themselves. When they did that there sprang across the sky a long flame of green lightning, and when it was over a man of them said:
“We need go no further. The O'Carrioll is dead.”
And they crossed themselves then, but not one of them dared say: “God have mercy on his soul,” because of the curse that was on him. Then one of them said: “What shall we do with him now?”
And the waves were leaping up against the rocks, the way they were striving to drag the men down into the sea.
Then the oldest of them answered, and what he said was: “The sea is calling for him, because he can not be buried in the consecrated ground. We shall bury him in the sea.”
And they flung him far out over the cliff, and the strong waves of the green sea leaped up to meet him as he fell, and there was his grave.
At sunrise, on the morning of the morrow, the red plague stalked into the monastery of Saint Bride, and the first token of its presence was when it put its hot breath upon the old abbot himself so that he withered within the hour. And it's the dying that was burying the dead from that hour on, until the last friar of them all, with his spade in his hand, tumbled, stricken, into the half-filled grave.
Then the loneliness and bleakness of desolation settled down on miles of hills and leagues of plains.
For three times ten years the deer browsed under the castle walls, and the badgers dug their lairs in the dry convent moat; and then the O'Broders sent their herds and their cattle and their swine down into the fat grass lands which for so long had lain fallow. But for years after that no one had the courage in his four bones to take shelter in the castle, or the convent, for fear of the sickness and the misfortune that was on the two places.
But after a time there came an old swineherd of the O'Broders—Brown Shamus, he was called—and on winter nights he used to be driving his pigs into the castle yard and to be building a great blaze on the hearth of the hall, the way he would be sleeping in the warmth of it.
One night as he sat huddled before the fire with his chin on his knees there fell a hard rap on the hall door behind him. Brown Shamus never turned his head, for he'd often heard sounds like that before at night in the castle, and he had seen strange shapes, and well he knew that it's from the grave they were, and what he'd do then was to be shutting his eyes and striving not to be thinking of them.
But the rap came again, and after it a blast of cold air. By that Shamus knew the door was open. He turned around then, and what he saw was a very old man and a very old woman, and they perishing with the cold. At that Shamus began on his prayers, for he made no doubt but what it was two spirits standing forninst him.
Then the old man, seeing the fright that was on Shamus, spoke up, and it's what he said:
“Have no fear, swineherd of the brown beard, it is I, Turlough O'Carrioll; and this is the Lady O'Carrioll, my brother's wife, that has come back with me.”
At that the terror was all the greater on Shamus, for he was sure the two had been dead at the bottom of the sea those forty years. But when they drew nearer to the fire, and he heard the fall of their shoes on the stones of the floor, he knew by that it was living creatures they were, for the others, that used to be coming and going there, made no sound at all.
And sure enough, Turlough O'Carrioll it was, coming back after all these years, and his brother's wife along with him. Instead of being murdered and killed, as the report was out, they had taken a currach at night, and had slipped away to foreign parts, where they lived together until the hour I'm telling you about. And the pride of Black Roderick O'Carrioll, and his bitter shame, and maybe a bit of love for the both of them as well, had kept their flight and their crime secret—even when the dark man was excommunicated, and cursed, and forsaken on account of them, he made no sign. Sure you can never tell what good or evil thing is working hidden inside the mind of a man.
How long Turlough and the Lady O'Carrioll remained living I'm not very sure. It may have been one year, or it may have been two years, but it wasn't very long. At any rate, the two of them died, and were put in the one grave, and that was the end of the world for them, and they came back no more. You may see the wide brown flag that covers them to this day.
And wouldn't it have been a good thing, too, if Roderick O'Carrioll, and the monks of Saint Bride with him, could have found untroubled graves in consecrated ground? But an unjust curse is a dreadful thing. And through five hundred years, as sure as the night of All Souls' came, the friars of the abbey, and the lord of the castle, did bitter penance for their sin.
The dead make no account of time, they say—and, indeed, why should they?—and so one generation followed another generation, and the story of the curse came down with the years and the weary penance was still unfinished.
By and by the the castle of O'Carrioll melted away. One by one its great stones were rolled down the mountainside to build the fishers' village of Killgillam, which was growing up on the ribbon of sandy beach below—the same village that I was telling you about, where Michael Bresnahan lived.
But no man was hardy enough to take a single stone from the haunted abbey, for fear of the bad luck it might bring him. So it crumbled away in the sun, and in the storms, and the gray rocks that tumbled lay where they fell.
And many's the strange whisper that went around about things that were seen at night on the top of that lonely hill. And I myself knew an old man, who once lived in that village, and his name was Thomas O'Deegan, and it's what he told me:
One All Souls' night when he was out on the bay alone, fixing his nets, and the wind was sweeping down from the face of the cliff, he heard the sound of many voices chanting together, and it was the litany for the dead they were singing.
Now, it's in the prayer-book, as every one knows, that the living may pray for the dead, and the dead may pray for the living, but the sorrow of it is, that the dead may not pray for the dead. It's a queer way that is, but they do be saying that there's a stranger thing still, and I'm greatly bothered sometimes to know the reason, and it's what it is: Though the dead can not pray for the dead, if one among the living say a prayer for the departed, then the dead may join his prayer to the living prayer, and so it makes one prayer, and they'll both be heard.
And this was the penance that was put on the monks of Saint Bride:
Once a year, upon All Souls' night—the night O'Carrioll died—they were to come out of their graves, every one, and to pray for the dead man's soul, and this until the day of judgment came, with no release unless some living voice would join itself to their dead voices.
And it was a punishment put upon Black Roderick, too, for his red deeds, that his soul should attend them there and find no ease until it felt the blessing of the abbot of Saint Bride. And so the useless prayers went on through all the generations, for sure what man in all the country was brave enough to climb that lonely road at midnight on Hallowe'en?
So by this time your honor will understand the hard task that Sheila McGuire put upon Michael Bresnahan: He was to go alone, d'ye mind, at midnight of All Souls', to the ruined monastery and there to face the unhappy spirits of the monks of Saint Bride, and to join his living prayers with their own, over the body of Black Roderick.
On the way home from Ballinderg, after seeing Sheila, Michael turned over and over in his mind the advice the fairy doctor had given him, and it's what he decided at last:
“Well, after all, I think I'd better try to stand the faulting of Katie for a while longer, and if the worst comes to the worst,” said the persecuted man to himself, “maybe I'll stop a trifle of the drink for peace' sake.” With that he tossed the matter from his mind and did the best he could with Katie.
Be that as it may, one afternoon not long after, as the lad was on his way home from the village of Ballyslane (where he was after selling a fine cow to his uncle, Ned Corrigan, who kept the public-house by the bridge), he took for a short cut home the path along the cliff. When he reached the top of the hill there was a weariness on him from his journey and a bit of a weakness maybe, besides, so he stopped to clear his wits and to rest a while on the sunny side of the old abbey.
As Michael sat comfortably reclining with his back to the wall and he smoking his pipe, the boy could see far down below him where the little village straggled lazily along the yellow beach. About a stone's throw from the edge of the green cliff stood his own white cottage, with the gray nets drying or its roof, and he could make out, too, Katie herself moving around in the thumb-nail of a garden with one of the children clinging to her petticoat, and it's what he thought:
Illustration: The red plague stalked into the monastery of Saint Bride
“Oh, wouldn't I be the foolish man to be going down there now the way I am with the sign of the drop of drink on me after the hard warning about the public-houses she was putting on me when I went away this morning! No, no, Michael, take my advice, be a wise lad, and do you go in there now to the old chapel, where no one will be seeing you, and take a matter of forty winks or so, the way you'll have a sober and a clear head going down to her while it is still in the light of the evening.”
So saying, Michael rose, stepped carefully over the fallen arch stones that locked the doorway of the ruined chapel, and, after picking out a soft green mound for a pillow on the sunny side of the wall, laid himself down and fell asleep. But sure it wasn't forty winks nor forty hundred winks the poor man took. The afternoon shadowed into evening, and the evening darkened into night, and Michael says he was sleeping like one of the cold stones when, suddenly, something like the skim of a bird's wing, or the brush of a passing garment across his face, startled every vein in his body, and he was wide awake at once and sitting up.
The full moon was sailing swiftly out to sea through a bank of fleecy clouds, and it took a wondering second or two to place rightly in the lad's mind the tumbled, roofless walls and the tall, broken arches of the ruin. And it's ghostly and solemn enough the place was, too, in the moonlight, with the sighing of the wind in the yew trees, and the whispering of the restless ivy on the walls, and far away the lonesome chirping of a cricket.
As Bresnahan hesitated, round-eyed and breathless, suddenly from the gaping tower of the abbey, soft and muffled, stole the boom of a tolling bell. Its toll was like the hollow moan of the shoal bell when the fog lies heavy on the sea—it was the mere ghost of a sound.
“My grief and my wo, where am I at all, at all,” he began, “and what's this awful place?” The jump of his heart up into his throat took the breath from his lips, for the truth flashed into Michael's mind that this was the ruined abbey on the cliff where he had lain down for a minute's sleep; and, O Father in Heaven! wasn't to-night All Souls' night, when the terrible monks of Saint Bride walked in their awful penance?
The tolling ceased.
“The saints preserve us, 'tis the abbey!” whispered Michael. “Maybe I'll be able to slip down the hill before they come.” He was half to his feet when there broke from the court outside the chapel a low wailing cry that froze the blood in his heart. It was as if some one in deep torment were begging for a drop of pity.
“Remember not his iniquities,” pleaded the terrible voice. “Nor let Thine anger encompass him.”
Instantly the mournful chant of many lips, like the moan of the ocean, took up the response of the litany.
“O Lord, we beseech Thee to hear us.”
Michael crouched breathless behind a broken pillar. To the day of his death the bitter beseeching of that litany rang in his ears.
“From Thy wrath and from everlasting death,” wailed the first supplicant.
And then the response, growing wild and dismal as the winter wind:
“O Lord, deliver him.”
“I'm lost,” groaned Michael. “'Tis the monks of Saint Bride, and they're coming in.” Twice he tried to look, but the courage wasn't in him, so he just huddled there cowering. At the same time the ghostly chant kept swelling nearer and nearer, and every wild prayer for the dead, with its pitiful response, went driving through the heart of poor Bresnahan.
Presently he felt that the monks were near the chapel door behind him, and, compelled by very terror, Michael glanced shrinkingly back over his shoulder.
By this time the great white moon was flinging a soft steady light over the old ruin, and clearly, through the archway of the chapel, the crouching man saw approaching a sight terrible for mortal eyes.
Marching, two by two, moved a shadowy procession of gray-robed monks, and they chanting the litany for the dead as they came. The spectres walked with arms folded, and each bowed head was hidden in its cowl. There must have been fifty of them. The fallen stones along their way were no hindrance to their feet any more than if those same stones had been moon-shadows.
A few paces in front of the procession, slow, solemn, and silent, the abbot marched alone, a tall, stately figure. Just behind him four monks carried something between them on a litter. As the abbot entered the ruined chapel, soft and low again the bell in the tower began tolling.
Michael saw that they were going to pass by within a yard of him, so he strained every nerve and sinew to move aside, but the arms and legs of the poor lad were as heavy and had as little life in them as the stones lying scattered about the ground. When the monks drew near, the night air grew cold and damp and close as an open vault.
“Out of Thy great pity pardon his infirmities,” chanted the abbot.
“O Lord, we beseech Thee to hear us,” answered the monks.
When they were within five feet of him, Michael could see the abbot's hands crossed humbly upon the sunken breast: and, oh, achone mavrone! they were the long, thin, fleshless hands of a skeleton.
One face in all the ghastly train was visible, and that one was the still, white face of a dead man, who was being carried past on the bier. And a dreadful thing he was to see, with his long silken tunic dripping wet with the sea-brine, and the heavy seaweed clinging to him.
“Merciful Father!” gasped Bresnahan; “isn't it Black Roderick himself that I'm looking at, an' him dhrownded an' dead these five hundred years?”
It's well Michael Bresnahan marked that as the monks passed him by not one of them cast a shadow on the ground. And they turned neither to the right nor to the left, nor changed their pace, nor made any kind of sign, till they reached the place where the old altar used to be standing. There they stopped, and the four set the litter on the ground.
It was the abbot himself, then, that moved solemnly to the head of the bier, and, kneeling down as though before an altar, stretched wide his arms. He was praying there, but what he said Michael couldn't hear because the chanting had begun again. But at any rate, there they were, the dead praying for the dead. Here was the chance at last for poor Bresnahan to escape. And so, with teeth chattering and knees quaking, he turned him round and began creeping over toward the black, gaping archway.
There isn't a doubt but what Michael, if he had had the strength, would have opened his lips and prayed aloud with the monks, for he remembered the legend well of how the tormented spirits needed only a living voice to join its prayer with their own, the way they would have rest in quiet graves, but the fear was heavy on the poor man, and so he couldn't do that.
But just as he reached the archway the heart-broken wail rose higher and higher and more despairing, so that he could bear the sorrow of it no longer, and, turning where he stood, he bent his knee and cried aloud with the others: “O Lord, we beseech Thee to hear us.”
Those were the happy words, for as Bresnahan scrambled over the fallen stones of the threshold, and darted down the hill with all the strength of his legs, the wail of the solemn chant for the dead changed to the glorious burst of the “Te Deum Laudamus.” And no wonder: the curse was broken, the punishment of the centuries was ended, for the prayer of the living had been joined to the prayer of the dead. In that way Bresnahan knew that the spirits were released from their penance. And ye may not believe it, but it's as true as the Book that from that good day to this the monks of Saint Bride walk the ruin no more.
As for Katie Bresnahan, the kind-hearted woman, when she heard of the great miracle that her husband Michael had performed that night, she quit faulting him about the little drop of liquor he used to be taking, and on account of all that had happened to him Michael grew to be a hero throughout the countryside, and was looked up to as a knowledgable man to the day he died.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1933, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 91 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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