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Long before he was born and before Ireland was free, his mother, who was fifteen at that time, had been sent to visit an aunt and uncle and her cousins in county Cork. She had to walk from the train station down a country road to the edge of town to their cottage. It was evening and the sun was going down. In the distance as she walked she heard chapel bells ringing and eventually came upon a monastery along the road. Monks were walking to the chapel summoned for evening prayers. Some of them passed her on the road and she greeted them as was the custom, but they didn't acknowledge her. She thought it was odd because it was the custom to greet anyone you crossed on the road and for them to greet you back, even monks.
When she arrived at the cottage she mentioned the monastery at dinner. The family were perplexed because there was no monastery on that road and thought she might have taken a wrong turn, but where? The next day she walked with her cousins to the place where she had seen the monastery, but all that was there was a pile of hundreds of years old ruins, much of which had been picked over for building materials. The family decided not to talk about this any further and credited it to her overactive imagination.
Years later after she married and had children, she was listening to a radio program that was about the history of Ireland. One show made her sit up and take notice. The historical experts on the show were talking about Oliver Cromwell invading Ireland and the atrocities committed by his soldiers. One of the incidents involved was in Cork and the town that her relatives lived in. The soldiers had spotted the monastery as they were marching into the town. They waited until all the monks had gathered in the chapel for evening prayers, then came and locked them in the chapel and then set it on fire burning all the monks inside alive. She then knew she had seen the ghosts of those monks reliving the last moments of their lives before being killed by the Protestant soldiers who were killing all Catholic religious across Ireland on the orders of the British monarchy.
By this time Ireland had won its independence from England and I would like to believe that the ghost monks are now at rest being that their tormentors are no longer occupying their country.
Happy St. Pats everyone!
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