Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/109

 before our time to honour Holy Church. All they did I will be having done for me, and more too. Some bishops there were who, in their last days, laid down their croziers and put on the monk's habit, and died on the ashes in what they called humility. I am not one to crawl into Heaven that way. I will be borne across my diocese with pomp, and the clashing of spears and shields about me; and I will be entering Rosscarbery with my bells tolling and my priests chanting as they walk two by two, and all the people wailing at the sides of the path—and kneeling, mind you, as I pass on my way, with this great relic still in my hands. And this is what you will do for me—and you will provide entertainment and good places for the bards, and those who write chronicles in the abbeys, so that my fame may not suffer for the want of a supper or a stool by the fire, and you will administer my will and my estate as I devise. I ask you to promise me these things, Turlogh, son of Fineen, and you will swear it with your hand on this casket."

The old chief's eyes shone with a prompt and welcome resolve. He laid his hand, above the Bishop's, on the casing of the relic, and, kneeling to kiss the ring again, swore his oath.

"Send to me now my people," the prelate said, closing his eyes in weariness.

To the priests who came when his host had departed he gave commands. His ordo should be brought to him, and parchment or paper for writing, and pens and ink, and thereafter no one of them, nor anybody save his oldest body-servant, should enter the room for the space of three days. When they told him, perforce, that the fire in the castle had swept away all writing materials, he fell into a rage, until they made shift with quills fresh cut from a fowl dead in the bawn, and with a violet dye of wild-cress compounded by the herb-doctor. Then they left him alone with his ordo. For