Howsoever, the angel showed Paul, at full length and completely, the pains of hell. And, on Paul's beholding all that, with the grace of God, and with the help of the angel, he gave thanks to God for receiving that vision, and he fell to thinking bitterly about the numbers of people on the world who were journeying to those pains. Then the angel led Paul from the clouds of hell until he gave him a sight of the glory of the heaven of God. And, on Paul's beholding that sight, no sorrow of all he had had in his life oppressed him. He beheld the entire glory of the heavenly palace. He beheld our Saviour Jesus Christ in the midst of the angels on His throne, and the Lord gave Paul a gentle, friendly welcome, and told him that it was a short time until he should come to eternal glory. Then the angel took Paul with him from the sight of the glory [of heaven], and left him in the place where he had found him at first, bade him farewell, and departed to heaven.
Paul was throughout his life teaching and preaching to the congregations and to the Gentiles about the glory of the heavens and the pains of hell.
I wrote down the following story from the mouth of John Cunningham of Ballinphuill, Co. Roscommon, on the high road between Frenchpark and Ballaghaderreen, about twenty years ago. Oscar's flail is well known in Irish tradition. The poet O'Kelly, in his series of English curses on Doneraile, alludes to it--
May Oscar with his fiery flail To pieces dash all Doneraile.
Mr. Stephen Gwynn, M.P., found a variant of this story in Donegal and has given a spirited poetic version of it. The story is also known in Waterford. It is probably spread all over the lands occupied by the Gael, and contains elements that are exceedingly old. The very verses about "the humming gnat or the scintilla of a beam of the sun" which I wrote down from the mouth of old John Cunningham in the Co. Roscommon, had been already jotted down in phonetics by Magregor, the Dean of Lismore, in Argyllshire in the year 1512. I printed the whole story with a French translation and introduction in the "Revue Celtique," vol. 13, p. 425, showing how in the Tripartite life of St. Patrick the story of piercing a penitent's foot is told of a son of the King of Munster. But, as his name was doubtless soon forgotten, the story got fathered upon Oisín.