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.

The shock produced by his death struck the miserable woman into the
utter darkness of settled derangement. Sh