While these ceremonies were going forward, the churchyard presented a characteristic picture.  Beside the usual groups who straggle through the place, to amuse themselves by reading the inscriptions on the tombs, you might see many individuals kneeling on particular graves, where some relation lay—­for the benefit of whose soul they offered up their prayers with an attachment and devotion which one cannot but admire.  Sometimes all the surviving members of the family would assemble, and repeat a Rosary for the same purpose.  Again, you might see an unhappy woman beside a newly-made grave, giving way to lamentation and sorrow for the loss of a husband, or of some beloved child.  Here, you might observe the “last bed” ornamented with hoops, decked in white paper, emblematic of the virgin innocence of the individual who slept below;—­there, a little board-cross informing you that “this monument was erected by a disconsolate husband to the memory of his beloved wife.”  But that which excited greatest curiosity was a sycamore-tree, which grow in the middle of the burying-ground.

It is necessary to inform the reader, that in Ireland many of the church-yards are exclusively appropriated to the interment of Roman Catholics, and, consequently, the corpse of no one who had been a Protestant would be permitted to pollute or desecrate them.  This was one of them:  but it appears that by some means or other, the body of a Protestant had been interred in it—­and hear the consequence!  The next morning heaven marked its disapprobation of this awful visitation by a miracle; for, ere the sun rose from the east, a full-grown sycamore had shot up out of the heretical grave, and stands there to this day, a monument at once of the profanation and its consequence.  Crowds wore looking at this tree, feeling a kind of awe, mingled with wonder, at the deed which drew down such a visible and lasting mark of God’s displeasure.  On the tombstones near Kelly’s grave, men and women were seated, smoking tobacco to their very heart’s content; for, with that profusion which characterizes the Irish in everything, they had brought out large quantities of tobacco, whiskey, and bunches of pipes.  On such occasions it is the custom for those who attend the wake or the funeral to bring a full pipe home with them; and it is expected that, as often as it is used, they will remember to say “God be merciful to the soul of him that this pipe was over.”

The crowd, however, now began to disperse; and the immediate friends of the deceased sent the priest, accompanied by Kelly’s brother, to request that we would come in, as the last mark of respect to poor Denis’s memory, and take a glass of wine and a cake.

“Come, Toby,” said my brother, “we may as well go in, as it will gratify them; we need not make much delay, and we will still be at home in sufficient time for dinner.”

“Certainly you will,” said the Priest; “for you shall both come and dine with me to-day.”