‘And what’s the news?’ asked Father Batt.

’None that I know on earth, but I do hear tell that the floor of purgatory has given way and all the inhabitants have fallen into hell.’

’Oh, the poor Protestants, that will be all crushed by the weight atop of them,’ was Father Batt’s rejoinder.

Few priests in Kerry have been better known or more beloved than he, almost the last of the old-fashioned school, and he was always warm friends with his Protestant colleague in Milltown, where he resided.

Father Batt invariably took a few tumblers of hot whisky punch after dinner, and having got ill was advised by the doctor to give it up and take to claret.

When the bishop met him some time later, he said:—­

’Well, Father Batt, I am afraid you do not like claret so well as the whisky.’

‘It’s this way, my lord,’ he replied.  ’I don’t object to the taste so much as I thought I should, but I find it very tedious.’

It is with some diffidence that I venture upon a convent story.  To begin with, I am a Protestant, and secondly, in relation to one of these ladies’ clubs under sacerdotal patronage I feel like Paul Pry, always apologetic when putting in an appearance.

Still, the tale is quite innocent and is absolutely true.

The convent is in Kerry and up to recently the order had been an enclosed one.  But a papal edict arrived one day, bidding the nuns go out to teach, and to collect, as well as to relieve, the suffering in their own homes.

The Mother Superior was exceedingly wroth.

‘What!’ quoth she.  ’Does the Holy Father want to be interfering with me after I have been within these walls for the last eight-and-twenty years?  I am not going to begin tramping the roads at my time of life, not for the Holy Father himself, no, nor all the Cardinals too.  A pretty state of things indeed.  Why, he’ll be telling me to ride a bicycle next!’

The county of Cork was at one time so notorious for cattle-stealing that a Roman Catholic bishop went down specially to admonish them.

When telling one parish priest to be firm with his congregation on the subject, the bishop observed:—­

’Nothing is more clearly laid down in the Bible than that if a man has possession of another man’s property he can never enter the kingdom of heaven.’

‘The Saints preserve us,’ exclaimed the priest; ’there’ll be plenty of empty houses there.’

It is not uncommon for a priest to get a bit of truth by accident or by cunning from one of his flock.

The parish priest was congratulating a man who had married three wives upon getting a bit of money with each, and received this answer:—­

’Well, your reverence, I did not do badly at all, but between the weddings and the funerals, your reverence took care it was not all clear profit.’

There is plenty of hard barter about the terms of these ceremonies, and on one occasion at Brosna, when the curate stood out for three pounds as his fee for performing the marriage service, the would-be bridegroom held out a thirty shilling note, saying:—­