went to Lough Derg to wash away his sins; and Brian Braar, having also become penitent, the two worthies accompanied each other to the lake.  On entering the boat, however, to cross over to the island, such a storm arose as drove them back.  Brian assured his companion that he himself was the cause of it.

“There is now,” said he, “but one more chance for me; and we must have recourse to it.”  He then returned homewards, and both had reached a hill-side near Bryan’s house, when the latter desired the young priest to remain there a few minutes, and he would return to him; which he did with a hatchet in his hand.

     “Now,” said he, “you must cut me into four quarters,
     and mince my body into small bits, then cast them into
     the air, and let them go with the wind.”

The priest, after much entreaty, complied with his wishes, and returned to Lough Derg, where he afterwards lived twelve years upon one meal of bread and water per diem.  Having thus purified himself, he returned home; but, on passing the hill where he had minced the Friar, he was astonished to see the same man celebrating mass, attended by a very penitential looking congregation of spirits.

“Ah,” said Brian Braar, when mass was over, “you are now a happy man.  With regard to my state for the voluntary sacrifice I have made of myself, I am to be saved; but I must remain on this mountain until the Day of Judgment.”  So saying, he disappeared.

There is little to be said about the superstition of the Lianhan Shee, except that it existed as we have drawn it, and that it is now fading fast away.  There is also something appropriate in associating the heroine of this little story with the being called the Lianhan Shee, because, setting the superstition aside, any female who fell into her crime was called Lianhan Shee. Lianhan Shee an Sogarth signifies a priest’s paramour, or, as the country people say, “Miss.”  Both terms have now nearly become obsolete.

We must here draw a veil over that which ensued, as the description of it would be both unnatural and revolting.  Let it be sufficient to say, that the next morning he was found burned to a cinder, with the exception of his feet and legs, which remained as monuments of, perhaps, the most dreadful suicide that ever was committed by man.  His razor, too, was found bloody, and several clots of gore were discovered about the hearth; from which circumstances it was plain that he had reduced his strength so much by loss of blood, that when he committed himself to the flames, he was unable, even had he been willing, to avoid the fiery and awful sacrifice of which he made himself the victim.  If anything could deepen the the impression of fear and awe, already so general among the people, it was the unparalleled nature of his death.  Its circumstances are yet remembered in the parish and county wherein it occurred—­for it is no fiction, gentle reader! and the titular bishop who then presided over the diocese, declared, that while he lived, no person bearing the unhappy man’s name should ever be admitted to the clerical order.