the women that had side trails behind them, and the side trails cut off by the fiends and burned on their head; and some took of the cutting all burning and stopped therewith their mouths, their noses, and their ears. I saw also their gay chaplets of gold and pearls and precious stones, turned into nails of iron, burning, and fiends with burning hammers smiting them into their heads.” These were proud and vain people. Then he saw another fire, where the fiends were putting out people’s eyes, and pouring molten brass and lead into the sockets, and tearing off their arms, and the nails of their feet and hands, and soldering them on again. This was the doom of swearers. William saw other fires wherein the devils were executing tortures varied and horrible on their unfortunate victims. We need follow him no further.
At the end of the fifteenth century the Purgatory in Lough Derg was destroyed, by orders of the pope, on hearing the report of a monk of Eymstadt in Holland, who had visited it, and had satisfied himself that there was nothing in it more remarkable than in any ordinary cavern. The Purgatory was closed on S. Patrick’s day, 1497; but the belief in it was not so speedily banished from popular superstition. Calderon made it the
