Chapter 31

CONCERNING THE NEARNESS TOGETHER OF HEAVEN, EARTH, AND PURGATORY¹

In Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far apart. I have heard of a ghost that was many years in a tree and many years in the archway of a bridge, and my old Mayo woman says, "There is a bush up at my own place, and the people do be saying that there are two souls doing their penance² under it. When the wind blows one way the one has shelter, and when it blows from the north the other has the shelter. It is twisted over with the way they be rooting under it for shelter. I don't believe it, but there is many a one would not pass by it at night." Indeed there are times when the worlds are so near together that it seems as if our earthly chattels³ were no more than the shadows of things beyond. A lady I knew once saw a village child running about with a long trailing petticoat upon her, and asked the creature why she did not have it cut short. "It was my grandmother's," said the child; "would you have her going about yonder with her petticoat up to her knees, and she dead but four days?" I have read a story of a woman whose ghost haunted her people because they had made her grave-clothes so short that the fires of purgatory burned her knees. The peasantry expect to have beyond the grave houses much like their earthly homes, only there the thatch⁴ will never grow leaky, nor the white walls lose their lustre⁵, nor shall the dairy be at any time empty of good milk and butter. But now and then a landlord or an agent or a gauger⁶ will go by begging his bread, to show how God divides the righteous from the unrighteous.

1892 and 1902.

1 purgatory   

n.炼狱；苦难；adj.净化的，清洗的

参考例句：

• Every step of the last three miles was purgatory.最后3英里时每一步都像是受罪。
• Marriage,with peace,is this world's paradise;with strife,this world's purgatory.和谐的婚姻是尘世的乐园，不和谐的婚姻则是人生的炼狱。

2 penance   

n.（赎罪的）惩罪

参考例句：

• They had confessed their sins and done their penance.他们已经告罪并做了补赎。
• She knelt at her mother's feet in penance.她忏悔地跪在母亲脚下。

3 chattels   

n.动产，奴隶( chattel的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• An assignment is a total alienation of chattels personal. 动产转让是指属人动产的完全转让。 来自辞典例句
• Alan and I, getting our chattels together, struck into another road to reassume our flight. 艾伦和我收拾好我们的财物，急匆匆地走上了另一条路，继续过我们的亡命生活。 来自辞典例句

4 thatch   

vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部；n.茅草(屋)

参考例句：

• They lit a torch and set fire to the chapel's thatch.他们点着一支火把，放火烧了小教堂的茅草屋顶。
• They topped off the hut with a straw thatch. 他们给小屋盖上茅草屋顶。

5 lustre   

n.光亮，光泽；荣誉

参考例句：

• The sun was shining with uncommon lustre.太阳放射出异常的光彩。
• A good name keeps its lustre in the dark.一个好的名誉在黑暗中也保持它的光辉。

6 gauger   

n.收税官

参考例句：