Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and S. Barbara and
S. Scholastica and S. Ursula with eleven thousand
virgins. And all came with nimbi and aureoles
and gloriae, bearing palms and harps and swords and
olive crowns, in robes whereon were woven the blessed
symbols of their efficacies, inkhorns, arrows, loaves,
cruses, fetters, axes, trees, bridges, babes in a
bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys, dragons, lilies,
buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives, soupladles,
stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline, bells, crutches,
forceps, stags’ horns, watertight boots, hawks,
millstones, eyes on a dish, wax candles, aspergills,
unicorns. And as they wended their way by Nelson’s
Pillar, Henry street, Mary street, Capel street, Little
Britain street chanting the introit in EPIPHANIA DOMINI
which beginneth surge, ILLUMINARE and thereafter
most sweetly the gradual OMNES which saith de
Saba VENIENT they did divers wonders such as casting
out devils, raising the dead to life, multiplying
fishes, healing the halt and the blind, discovering
various articles which had been mislaid, interpreting
and fulfilling the scriptures, blessing and prophesying.
And last, beneath a canopy of cloth of gold came the
reverend Father O’Flynn attended by Malachi
and Patrick. And when the good fathers had reached
the appointed place, the house of Bernard Kiernan
and Co, limited, 8, 9 and 10 little Britain street,
wholesale grocers, wine and brandy shippers, licensed
for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption
on the premises, the celebrant blessed the house and
censed the mullioned windows and the groynes and the
vaults and the arrises and the capitals and the pediments
and the cornices and the engrailed arches and the spires
and the cupolas and sprinkled the lintels thereof
with blessed water and prayed that God might bless
that house as he had blessed the house of Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob and make the angels of His light to
inhabit therein. And entering he blessed the
viands and the beverages and the company of all the
blessed answered his prayers.
—ADIUTORIUM nostrum in NOMINE DOMINI.
—QUI FECIT COELUM et terram.
—DOMINUS VOBISCUM.
—Et cum SPIRITU TUO.
And he laid his hands upon that he blessed and gave thanks and he prayed and they all with him prayed:
—Deus, CUIUS VERBO SANCTIFICANTUR
OMNIA, BENEDICTIONEM Tuam EFFUNDE super
CREATURAS ISTAS: Et PRAESTA ut QUISQUIS
Eis SECUNDUM LEGEM et VOLUNTATEM
Tuam cum GRATIARUM ACTIONE USUS FUERIT per
INVOCATIONEM SANCTISSIMI
NOMINIS tui corporis SANITATEM et ANIMAE
TUTELAM te AUCTORE PERCIPIAT per
CHRISTUM DOMINUM nostrum.
—And so say all of us, says Jack.
—Thousand a year, Lambert, says Crofton or Crawford.
—Right, says Ned, taking up his John Jameson. And butter for fish.


