J. F. Campbell Collection > Fireside stories of Ireland

THE GREEDY MASON. I 29
a little marrow, broke a leg bone of our poor pet cow, our
support, our earthly treasure. Pass before me one by one.
I shall soon read in the glutton's face the evidence of his
crime.
"No need," said the repentant culprit. " I am the wretch,
and will f)atiently suffer any punishment you may inflict."
" You have done weU,"said the saint. " Had you endea-
voured to conceal your crime, you would die by the fall of
a stone before the building would be completed. However,
the curse shall remain in your family ; and a late descend-
ant of yours shall perish as he passes by this cathedral,
from a slipping of one of the walls." To tliis day a de-
scendant of the man will not dare to walk by the crumbling
walls of the old building.
This saintly legend was not the work of an ordinary hagio-
grapher. Some bardic romancer had received by tradition
such a pagan myth as that of the Xorse deities feeding on
their boar or their horse Sleipner after their daily combats
were ended, and tacked it to the memory of the christian
saint.
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THE MUSIC OF HEAVEN.
There was a monastery once, and it had a nice garden, and
between the garden and a big forest there was only a rail-
ing that had a door in the middle of it. A very pious
monk was sitting in the summer house of the garden one
evening, after saying all his prayers and his offices, and he
was pondering over different things in the psalms he was
after reading, and among the rest one saying that a thousand
years was in the sight of God only as a day. He pondered,
I and he pondered, and he could not understand the words
at all, and while he was this way, a bird began to sing in
I one of the trees just outside the garden. He never heard
j anything like it in his life before, and it was just what he
supposed the melody made by angels to be. At last the
bird fluttered away to a tree further off", and the monk went
outside of the garden, not to lose any of the notes, and still
the bird moved further off, and still the monk followed it,
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