In looking over the papers of my late valued and respected friend,
Francis Purcell, who for nearly fifty years discharged the arduous duties
of a parish priest in the south 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 enquiries 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 habits were from many causes more refined, and whose
tastes more literary than are those of 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