e than were
ever in it before. And when she was dying, and her children about her,
the priest said to her: "Mrs. Gallagher, it's in heaven you'll be at 12
o'clock to-morrow."'

But when death comes, it is not enough to have been charitable; and it
is not right to touch the body or lay it out for a couple of hours; for
the soul should be given time to fight for itself, and to go up to
judgment. And sometimes it is not willing to go; for Mrs. Casey says:--

'The Saviour, one time, told St. Patrick to go and prepare a man that
was going to die. And St. Patrick said: "I'd sooner not go; for I never
yet saw the soul depart from the body." But then he went, and he
prepared the man. And when he was lying there dead, he saw the soul go
from the body; and three times it went to the door, and three times it
came back and kissed the body. And St. Patrick asked the Saviour why it
did that: and He said: "That soul was sorry to part from the body,
because it had held it so clean and so honest."'

When the hill-people talk of 'the time of the war,' it is the war that
once took place in heaven that is understood. And when '_Those_' are
spoken of, the fallen angels are understood, the cloud of witness, the
whirling invisible host; and it is only to a stranger that an
explanation need be given.

'They were in heaven once,' Mary Glyn says 'and heaven is the first
place there was war; and they were all to be done away with; and it was
St. Peter asked the Saviour to help them, when he saw Him going to empty
the heavens. So He turned His hand like this; and the earth and the sky
and the sea were full of them, and they are in every place, and you know
that better than I do, because you read books. Resting they do be in the
daytime, and going about at night. And their music is the finest you
ever heard, like all the fifers, and all the instruments, and all the
tunes of the world. I heard it sometimes myself, and there is no music
in the world like it; but not all can hear it. Round the hill it comes,
and you going in at the door. And they are quiet neighbours if you treat
them well. God bless them, and bring them all to heaven.'

And then, having mentioned Monday (a spell against unseen listeners),
and said, 'God bless the hearers, and the place it is told in'--and her
niece, Mary Irwin, having said, 'God bless all we see, and those we
don't see,' they tell--first one speaking and then the other--that: 'One
night there were _banabhs_ in t