Everywhere in Ireland are the holy wells. People as they pray by them
make little piles of stones, that will be counted at the last day and
the prayers reckoned up. Sometimes they tell stories. These following
are their stories. They deal with the old times, whereof King Alfred
of Northumberland wrote--
"I found in Innisfail the fair,
In Ireland, while in exile there,
Women of worth, both grave and gay men,
Many clericks and many laymen.
Gold and silver I found, and money,
Plenty of wheat, and plenty of honey;
I found God's people rich in pity,
Found many a feast, and many a city."
There are no martyrs in the stories. That ancient chronicler Giraldus
taunted the Archbishop of Cashel because no one in Ireland had
received the crown of martyrdom. "Our people may be barbarous," the
prelate answered, "but they have never lifted their hands against
God's saints; but now that a people have come amongst us who know how
to make them (it was just after the English invasion), we shall have
martyrs plentifully."
The bodies of saints are fastidious things. At a place called
Four-mile-Water, in Wexford, there is an old graveyard full of saints.
Once it was on the other side of the river, but they buried a rogue
there, and the whole graveyard moved across in the night, leaving the
rogue-corpse in solitude. It would have been easier to move merely the
rogue-corpse, but they were saints, and had to do things in style.