The priest
told her then as the saint had told him, and she threw herself on her
two knees praying God and shedding tears, and said she "a hundred welcomes
to the graces of God, and if it is the death that God has promised me
I am satisfied to suffer it; go out now my son," says she, "and when
I'll be ready for you to get to your work I'll call you in."
The priest
went out fervently reading and praying to God.
The mother
washed and cleaned herself. She got sheets and sharp knives ready for
the work, and when she had everything prepared she called the priest
to come in.
And as
the priest turned around on his foot, the brightness came over his head
again, and it said to him that all his family had found forgiveness
for their sins, on account of the earnest repentance that his mother
was after making, and the awful death that she was fully satisfied to
suffer.
The priest
came into the house, and a great joy in his heart, and his mother was
stretched on the length of her back on the table, and sheets under her
and over her, and her two hands stretched out from her, and she praying
God, and two sharp knives by her side and, says the priest to her, "rise
up mother," says he, "I have got forgiveness from the King of the Graces,
for our sins, and I beseech you now from this day out, do not forget
to diligently offer up the tobacco prayer every time you use it."
And true
was the story. There was never a time from that day till the day that
the priest's mother went into the clay that she did not earnestly offer
up the prayer to God and to the glorious Virgin.
And do
you know that the old people throughout the country used to be offering
up that same prayer daily, as long as a word of our Irish language remained
alive on the green island of the saints.
Do you
know what I'm going to tell you? The young people nowadays know nothing
of the dangers of smoking without saying the tobacco prayer.
HISTORICAL
NOTE:
Here is
a translation of the prayer from Irish as collected in the late
19th. century by John Mac Neill from a Co. Mayo peasant by the name
of Miceál Mac Ruadhrí (Rogers)
Paidir
i ndiadh an Tobac (The Prayer after Tobacco)
Eighteen
fulls of the churchyard of Patrick, of the mantle of Brigit, and the
holy tomb of Christ, of the palace of Rome, of the church of God, be
with thy soul (and the soul of him above whose head was the tobacco
and with the souls of the dead in Purgatory all together. (This was
said only when the tobacco was taken and given at a wake).
May not
more numerous be
The grains of sand by the sea,
Or the blades of grass on the lea,
Or the drops of dew on the tree,
Than the blessings on thy soul
And the souls of the dead with thee
And my soul when the life shall flee.
It is
for God to give shelter, light, and the glory of the heavens to thesouls
of the dead in Purgatory
©Vince
Hearns March 2001
