Stories
& Legends of Ireland
"Do you
know what I'm going to tell you? I heard that they're going to stop
people from smoking tobacco and not to soon for them, God knows, because
people nowadays are smoking away like a chimney with a rook's nest in
it, and not one of them ever saying a prayer before lighting up!"
"No good
can come of it, I tell you....."
A long
time ago in my father's time, there was a woman and she had only one
son. When he came to age she sent him to college and made a priest of
him. After his coming from the college he was a short little while at
home; and he was one day walking out in the garden when there came a
saint in the air over his head and spoke down to him, and told the priest
that he himself and all who belonged to him were damned on account of
his mother. (God
protect us all this night).
The priest
asked him what was the crime his mother had committed, and the saint
told him that she was smoking tobacco with twelve years and she never
said the tobacco prayer in all that time.
"Bad enough!"
says the priest, "is there anything at all down from heaven to set that
right?" says the priest.
"There's
nothing but one thing alone" says he, "and this is it. When you go in
to your mother tell her as I have told to you. And unless she shall
be prepared to suffer the death that I'll tell you, not a sight of the
country of heaven will your mother or anyone of her family see for ever."
"What
death is it"? said the priest to him
"She must
let you" says he, "carve every bit of her body as fine as
sneeshin." (snuff)
The priest
went into the house and a heavy load on his heart. He sat upon a chair
and there was great grief to be seen on his face. His mother asked him
what was on him, and what had happened to him since he went out.
"Ah, there's
nothing on me but a little weariness" says he. "Kindle the pipe for
me mother," says he, "I'd like to get a blast of tobacco."
"I'll
kindle it and welcome", says she, "I thought avourneen," says she, "that
you were not using tobacco."
"Ah, maybe
a whiff would take this weariness off me," says he.
True was
the story. She put a coal in the pipe, and after smoking enough of the
pipe herself she handed it to the priest, but she never said the prayer.
And that was the reason he had told her to kindle the pipe, hoping,
do you know, that she would say the prayer, but she did not.
"Poor
enough!" said the priest in his own mind.
©Vince
Hearns March 2001
