Ordeal by Cohabitation

He	So I and my love Liadin
	Should sleep together without sin
	While any layman on the earth
	Would boast of what that chance was worth.


She	Though I and my love Cuirither
	Had practiced virtue for a year,
	Left together for one night
	Our thoughts would stray before daylight.


Note: Both [poems: ‘The Ex-Poet’ and ‘Ordeal by Cohabitation’] from
‘Liadain and Cuirithir’. St. Cummine, as author of a famous
Penitential, was regarded by Irish storytellers as a proper man to
handle lovers—see ‘The Nun of Beare’. He tests the progress in Virtue
of the two poet lovers by making them sleep together with a young
student between them. The experiment is a failure and Cuirithir
departs in anger. ‘Ex-poet’, as well as having its ordinary meaning,
is also a bitter play on the Old Irish word for ‘monk’, which might be
rendered ‘ex-laic’.

Source: Frank O'Connor; The Little Monasteries; Dublin; Dolmen
Press;1963, 1976 (1976 ed.);p.16