of Ireland, I met with the
following document. It is one of many such; for he was a curious and
industrious collector of old local traditions--a commodity in which
the quarter where he resided mightily abounded. The collection and
arrangement of such legends was, as long as I can remember him, his
hobby; but I had never learned that his love of the marvellous and
whimsical had carried him so far as to prompt him to commit the results
of his inquiries to writing, until, in the character of residuary
legatee, his will put me in possession of all his manuscript papers.
To such as may think the composing of such productions as these
inconsistent with the character and habits of a country priest, it is
necessary to observe, that there did exist a race of priests--those of
the old school, a race now nearly extinct--whose education abroad tended
to produce in them tastes more literary than have yet been evinced by
the alumni of Maynooth.

It is perhaps necessary to add that the superstition illustrated by the
following story, namely, that the corpse last buried is obliged,
during his juniority of interment, to supply his brother tenants of
the churchyard in which he lies, with fresh water to allay the burning
thirst of purgatory, is prevalent throughout the south of Ireland.

The writer can vouch for a case in which a respectable and wealthy
farmer, on the borders of Tipperary, in tenderness to the corns of his
departed helpmate, enclosed in her coffin two pair of brogues, a light
and a heavy, the one for dry, the other for sloppy weather; seeking thus
to mitigate the fatigues of her inevitable perambulations in procuring
water and administering it to the thirsty souls of purgatory. Fierce
and desperate conflicts have ensued in the case of two funeral parties
approaching the same churchyard together, each endeavouring to secure to
his own dead priority of sepulture, and a consequent immunity from the
tax levied upon the pedestrian powers of the last-comer. An instance not
long since occurred, in which one of two such parties, through fear of
losing to their deceased friend this inestimable advantage, made their
way to the churchyard by a short cut, and, in violation of one of their
strongest prejudices, actually threw the coffin over the wall, lest time
should be lost in making their entrance through the gate. Innumerable
instances of the same kind might be quoted, all tending to show
how strongly among the peasantry of the s