Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/135

RV 67 (Rh) and kelpies, night-crows, and mud-eels, all waiting to have a snatch at him.

'Brother Philip,' said the abbot, 'we exhort thee to say thy prayers, compose thyself, and banish that foolish chant from thy mind; it is but a deception of the devil's.'

'I will essay, reverend father,' said the sacristan, 'but the tune hangs by my memory like a burr in a beggar's rags; it mingles with the psalter; the very bells of the convent seem to repeat the words and jingle to the tune; and were you to put me to death at this very moment, it is my belief I should die singing it—"Now swim we merrily": it is as it were a spell upon me.'

He then again began to warble

And checking himself in the strain with difficulty, he exclaimed, 'It is too certain—I am but a lost priest! "Swim we merrily"—I shall sing it at the very mass—Woe is me! I shall sing all the remainder of my life, and yet never be able to change the tune!'

The honest abbot replied, 'he knew many a good fellow in the same condition'; and concluded the remark with 'ho! ho! ho!' for his reverence, as the reader may partly have observed, was one of those dull folks who love a quiet joke.

The sacristan, well acquainted with his superior's humour, endeavoured to join in the laugh, but his unfortunate canticle came again across his imagination, and interrupted the hilarity of his customary echo.

'By the rood, Brother Philip,' said the abbot, much moved, 'you become altogether intolerable! and I am convinced that such a spell could not subsist over a person of religion, and in a religious house, unless he were under mortal sin. Wherefore, say the seven penitentiary psalms—make diligent use of thy scourge and hair-cloth—refrain for three days from all food, save bread and water—I myself will shrive thee, and we will see if this singing devil may be driven out of thee; at least I think Father Eustace himself could devise no better exorcism.'