The Sinner’s Requiem
Introduction
Michael Wood. “Sinner’s Requiem.” The Theosophical Review 29.169 (1901): 66-70. Print.
Written by Michael Wood, “The Sinner’s Requiem” appeared on September 15, 1901, in The Theosophical Review. In this short story, set in a small town in Ireland, a priest finds a young girl outside his home one rainy night, pleading for a place to sleep. However, because the girl had a scandalous history by previously leaving the village with a “stranger” and bringing “such a shame [that] had not been known in the place for many a year,” the priest refuses to let her in and counsels her to return to her home where she had been denounced. The next morning, after feeling guilty for turning away the young girl, the priest sets out to make sure she had found a place to stay. After finding out that she did not return to her father’s home, he becomes worried that she became lost or even died in an unknown location. Eventually, he sees illuminating music, smells sweet fragrance, and hears beautiful requiem music coming from the ruined church on the hill. When the priest hikes up to the church the next day, he finds the deceased girl laying by the altar and prepared for burial by immortal beings; the priest and those who travelled with him then give her a proper obsequy.
This short story encompasses many theosophical beliefs, including the ideas that no single denomination holds a monopoly on truth and that all religions should be designed to help humanity grow to greater perfection. The priest’s refusal to help the poor girl because of her perceived sinful nature, despite her sincere humility, is proven unjust when heavenly messengers offer her an elegant requiem; the townspeople are then brought to “shame and penitence for their severity”—an argument that decries ecclesiastical exclusivity and beckons more charitable judgment. Further, the immortal beings preparing the girl’s body and singing the requiem were not only of the Christian tradition, but also the “people of Shee, the great Gods of old time,” implying that presumably “primitive” religions are on equal ground with Christianity. The song they were singing was “a song of triumph and of victory for all the sons of God throughout the world,” invoking the theosophical belief in universal salvation. The story as a whole is a call for a more catholic view of both individuals and religions.
Transcription
The Sinner’s Requiem
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There is a place in a thinly-populated part of Ireland, whether north, south, east or west, I do not know, which was a great centre of worship of the Gods of the Celtic peoples.[1]
When the first Christian monks came to Ireland and established their Faith there, their pious souls were grieved because the people put their salvation in peril by the worship of the Shee[2]; therefore to compel them, or, as it were, delude them into heaven against their will, these good men set up a little lonely Church on the sacred hillside, so that the prayers and chantings of the Christian priests and the presence of the Holy Rood[3] might banish the Pagan Gods, and the simple folk, coming to the accustomed places to pray to the Shee, might remain to supplicate the Virgin and blessed Saint Bride.
But it is said that the people worshipped the Holy Christ, and besought the Divine Mother for her prayers, and also offered worship in the same spot to Mannannan, son of Lir, Lord of the Waves, and to Brigit of the Eternal Fire, so that the ancient worship and the new faith joined hands in that place, and about it there reigned a great peace.[4]
As years passed by the little Church fell into decay; at the time when the thing befell of which I purpose to tell, it was but a lonely ruin, on a quiet hillside covered with bog myrtle and aglow in summer time with purple flowers. The Church was roofed only where the altar once had been, and where a portion of the old Rood-screen yet stood. No prayer nor holy chant, nor word of preacher had sounded there for more than three hundred years.
Two miles from the hill there was a small village where the people were very poor. The only house that was not a mere cabin was the little stone dwelling of the priest, which stood beside the church.[5]
It was a very wild and stormy night in early autumn when this priest heard a sound at his door. It was as though some one had fallen against the panels. The priest rose up and listened: he heard without a little faint sobbing, like the ghost of a grief, or like the weeping of one so weary as to be well nigh past the power of weeping; sorrowful to that bitter point of heart-break, when one suffers and makes no sign, or even feigns joy, so unavailing has one found grief to be.
The priest opened the door and the wind rushed in and plucked at him fiercely; without he saw only the darkness, but as he opened the door he heard one hidden in that darkness draw breath sharply, even as one draws it when hands are laid, ever so gently, on a throbbing wound. He peered out into the shadows, and there he saw, on her knees on the wet ground—for the rain clouds were sweeping in thickly from the sea, and the waters were loosed from them—a young girl, barefooted like all girls of that country; bareheaded was she likewise, for her shawl was gone, and her thin garments were soaked through and through with the pelting rain.
This girl, when she saw the priest perceived and recognized her, bowed her head low, and low, and lower yet, sobbing fainter and ever fainter, till her sobs and her breathing were but a feeble thread of gasping, anguish-shaken sound; at last, well nigh lying at his feet, she pleaded with him in a voice hollow with weakness and weariness, with cold and hunger and great shame, that he would give her shelter there, as in the Church, but for one night.
Now Ireland has, as all men know, great cause for pride in the virtue and purity of her maidens. Therefore this girl, who had held her lover dearer than her honour, was outcast from her father’s home. All the village cried out upon her when she went away with a stranger, for such a shame had not been known in the place for many a year; for months her name had been unheard in the home of her birth. Now, outcast, and deserted by one who had known neither how to hold dear his love, nor yet his honour, she came back to the spot where she had played and laughed as a little child and as a young maiden; in truth, she was still very young, having left her childhood but few years behind her.
The priest, speaking gravely but by no means harshly, bade her rather seek pardon and shelter in the home she had disgraced. And the girl, weeping bitterly, told him she had been thither, and her father had bidden her, with curses, to begone, and die where she would; and her mother had cast stones at her to drive her from the door. Therefore she came to the priest lest she should die, unshriven, in the storm, and her soul seek vainly for repose and pardon.
Then the priest pointed out to her the heaviness of her sin, and the evil example she had set to others;[6] he told her, moreover, that he would dishonor the sanctity of the church if he suffered her to shelter there; as for receiving her into his house, to him was given a great trust, namely, to tend the souls of the young men and maidens of the village. Therefore if he, pledged to this holy service, gave shelter to such as she was, his power with evil doers would be lessened, since it would be held that he thought lightly of deadly sin. He bade her rise and return to her father and bear to him the priest’s word, bidding him give his daughter shelter from the storm but for one night.
When he ceased to speak, the girl pleaded no more. She rose meekly from the wet earth, and knotted back the loose hair from her tear-stained face; then, weeping no longer, but faintly smiling, and plucking vaguely with the fingers at her thin garments, she walked away into darkness, and the priest shut the door.
But, having closed it, he was troubled, and feared lest he had done ill. He could not sleep, and at dawn when the wind lulled he went to the cabin of the girl’s father; he found that she had not returned there, nor could he find any trace of her. Then he was greatly troubled; he feared lest she had lost her life in some desert place, with none to shrive her, and none to say a prayer for her parting sinful soul. He went forth and spent the whole day in searching for her. Now when evening came a very strange thing befell this pious priest who knew well every hill and valley of that country. It may be he was glamoured of the good people; but, in any case, he lost his way, and could not find the road back to the village. When it was quite dark, he found himself standing at the foot of the hill whereon was the little ruined Church.
As he stood there, men say, his eyes were opened, so that about the hill he saw a great light and beheld the “people of the Shee,” the great Gods of old time.[7] He saw beautiful and stately forms wrapped in light, shining most gloriously, sweep on their unchanged course about the hill, as though they watched a holy place; then, while he looked and marvelled the Church should have no power to drive hence the Shee, he saw that in the Church too was shining a great light; from the ruined walls he heard the sound of a wondrous voice chanting somewhat that seemed to him familiar; he listened, and listening recognised the prayers the Church ordains for the repose of the souls of such as are within Her Fold. He heard the solemn Requiem[8] for the dead sung in the ruined Church, and many voices joined in the chant; down the hill there flowed a perfume, heavy and sweet, as of incense, and of those white garden lilies that mourners lay on the biers of their beloved. The chant grew fainter and fainter until it almost died; then it changed, and swelling forth again waxed strong and loud. It was no longer the chant of the Church for one departed soul; it was a great melody, a song of triumph and of victory for all the sons of God throughout the world; it was the hymn of a triumphant universe that filled the ears of the awe-struck priest; he heard it echo alike from within the ruined Church and from the trooping hosts of the holy hill. Then the sound died, the light faded; there was only the gurgle of a wee stream, and the whisper of the night wind through the bog myrtle.
The priest dared not climb the hill; he went home and passed the night in prayer. On the morrow he called the father of the outcast girl, and other of the villagers, and bade them climb the hill with him to the little Church. The day was very fine and warm and still; the last of the heather was glowing like purple flame in the sunlight. The priest walked reverently, bare-headed, through the unseen hosts of the hillside; the men, marvelling did even as he did; when he reached the threshold of the church he kneeled and crossed himself, those who followed him did likewise.
The dead outcast lay in the ruined church, whither she had crept for shelter; she lay at the foot of the Rood.[9] The men and women of that country tell, in awe, even to this day, that hands, pitying, though not mortal, had closed her sightless eyes, had composed her limbs, had crossed her dead arms upon her sinful bosom; they who had sung the Requiem for her soul’s repose had also clothed her body for the grave in fine linen without a spot; seeing these things, the people, in shame and penitence for their severity, gave her burial in the little plot without the Church, so that holy words and chantings float over her grave even to this day.
Michael Wood.
{Note.—I have been told, though how the truth of the matter stands I do not know, that this story is not without foundation in fact. The girl, outcast by her priest and her kindred, was found dead, robed for the grave, and “watched” by a light, upon a “fairy hill.”—M. W.”}
Notes
- ↑ The theosophists often used ancient, often perceived “primitive,” religions as examples for their call for religious tolerance (Michael Gomes, The Dawning of the Theosophical Movement, Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1987, 55-56, Print).
- ↑ An allusion to the “Banshee,” a female spirit in Irish mythology who announces oncoming death.
- ↑ The “Holy Rood” was believed to be the cross Jesus died on.
- ↑ Interdenominational thought was a main thrust of the theosophical movement (Gomes, Theosophical Movement, xi).
- ↑ Perceivably, this story is set in a time period when priests were still supported by public tax.
- ↑ For religious views of sin and morality and sin during the period, see Julie Melnyk, Victorian Religion: Faith and Life in Britain, California: Praeger, 2008, 40-45, Print.
- ↑ See FN 2.
- ↑ A “Requiem” is a Latin liturgical service for the Roman Catholic Church.
- ↑ See FN 3.
Edited by: Park, Benjamin: section 1, Winter 2009
