Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

Henry of Saltrey, in the twelfth century, spoke of the Saint hearing there the cries of those in Purgatory. The Knight Owain, in King Stephen's time, went down, and saw the horrors. Some were fastened down by their hair, to be bitten by fiery snakes; others were in molten metal, rivers of pitch, or lakes of cold. A wall of glass afforded sufferers a view of the joys of Paradise.

One monk, writing in the thirteenth century, affirms that any doubts as to Purgatory would be at once dispelled by going to Lough Derg. Froissart knew one who had been there. William Staunton, 1409, saw "orrible bastes" tormenting men. Yet the Pope, in 1497, ordered the cave to be closed up, upon the report of a Dutch monk that there was no truth in the stories circulated concerning the locality.

Notwithstanding the papal authority, the superstition still exists, and vast numbers of pilgrims frequent the scene of St. Patrick's Purgatory. The descent into hell by Istar, Orpheus, Hercules, &c., yet lives in the stories of Irish visitants to the lower regions.

In the ancient Book of Lismore is the following narrative--"Howbeit the devil there revealed the gates of hell to Brenaina. And Brenaina beheld that rough, hot prison, full of stench, full of flame, full of filth, full of the camps of the prisoners' demons, full of wailing, and screaming, and hurt and sad cries, and great lamentations, and moaning and hand-smiting of the sinful folks; and a gloomy, sorrowful life in cores of pain, in prisons of fire, in streams of the rows of eternal fire, in the cup of eternal sorrow, and death without limit, without end."

The Irish traveller beheld there demons torturing men and women, "monsters yellow, white, great-mouthed; lions fierce, greedy, dragons red, black, brown, demoniac--a place wherein there are streams frozen, bitter, ever stinking

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