Well, The People Showed That They Were Plased By A Loud
Shout, And Went Away Longing For The Next Sunday When I Was To Be
Presented To Them Without A Divil In Me.
Five times the next week
did I go to the priest's house, to be read to, and be sprinkled,
And have cloths put upon me, in order that the work of casting out
the last divil, which it seems was stronger than all the rest,
might be made smooth and aisy, and on the Saturday I came to have
the last divil cast out, and found his riverince in full
canonicals, seated in his aisy chair. 'Daughter,' said he when he
saw me, 'the work is nearly over. Now kneel down before me, and I
will make the sign of the cross over your forehead, and then you
will feel the last and strongest of the divils, which have so long
possessed ye, go out of ye through your eyes, as I expect you will
say to the people assembled in the chapel to-morrow.' So I put
myself on my knees before his reverence, who after muttering
something to himself, either in Latin or Shanna Gailey - I believe
it was Latin, said, 'Look me in the face, daughter!' Well, I
looked his reverence in the face, and there I saw his nose looking
so large, red, and inviting that I could not resist the temptation,
and before his reverence could make the sign of the cross, which
doubtless would have driven the divil out of me, I made a spring at
it, and seizing hold of it with forefinger and thumb, pulled hard
at it. Hot and inctious did it feel. Oh, the yell that his
reverence gave! However, I did not let go my hold, but kept
pulling at the nose, till at last to avoid the torment, his
reverence came tumbling down upon me, causing me by his weight to
fall back upon the floor. At the yell which he gave, and at the
noise of the fall, in came rushing his reverence's housekeeper and
stable-boy, who seeing us down on the floor, his reverence upon me
and my hand holding his reverence's nose, for I felt loth to let it
go, they remained in astonishment and suspense. When his
reverence, however, begged them, for the Virgin's sake, to separate
him from the divil of a woman, they ran forward, and having with
some difficulty freed his reverence's nose from my hand, they
helped him up. The first thing that his reverence did, on being
placed on his legs, was to make for a horse-whip, which stood in
one corner of the room, but I guessing how he meant to use it,
sprang up from the floor, and before he could make a cut at me, ran
out of the room, and hasted home. The next day, when all the
people for twenty miles round met in the chapel, in the expectation
of seeing me presented to them a purified and holy female, and
hearing from my mouth the account of the miracle which his
reverence had performed, his reverence made his appearance in the
pulpit with a dale of gould bater's leaf on his nose, and from the
pulpit he told the people how I had used him, showing them the
gould bater's leaf on his feature, as testimony of the truth of his
words, finishing by saying that if at first there were seven
devils, there were now seven times seven within me. Well, when the
people heard the story, and saw his nose with the bater's leaf upon
it, they at first began to laugh, but when he appealed to their
consciences, and asked them if such was fitting tratement for a
praist, they said it was not, and that if he would only but curse
me, they would soon do him justice upon me. His reverence then
cursed by book, bell, and candle, and the people, setting off from
the chapel, came in a crowd to the house where I lived, to wrake
vengeance upon me. Overtaking my son by the way, who was coming
home in a state of intoxication, they bate him within an inch of
his life, and left him senseless on the ground, and no doubt would
have served me much worse, only seeing them coming, and guessing
what they came about, though I was a bit intoxicated myself, I
escaped by the back of the house out into the bog, where I hid
myself amidst a copse of hazels. The people coming to the house,
and not finding me there, broke and destroyed every bit of
furniture, and would have pulled the house down, or set fire to it,
had not an individual among them cried out that doing so would be
of no use, for that the house did not belong to me, and that
destroying it would merely be an injury to the next tenant. So the
people, after breaking my furniture and ill-trating two or three
dumb beasts, which happened not to have been made away with, went
away, and in the dead of night I returned to the house, where I
found my son, who had just crawled home covered wit bruises. We
hadn't, however, a home long, for the agents of the landlord came
to seize for rent, took all they could find, and turned us out upon
the wide world. Myself and son wandered together for an hour or
two, then, having a quarrel with each other, we parted, he going
one way and I another. Some little time after I heard that he was
transported. As for myself, I thought I might as well take a leaf
out of the woman's book who had been the ruin of me. So I went
about bidding people give me alms for the glory of God, and
threatening those who gave me nothing that the mass should never
comfort them.
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