'That God may perish you on the mountain-side, without a priest,
bishop, or clerk. Seven years may you be senseless and without wit,
going from door to door as an unfortunate creature.
'May you have a mouth that will go back to your ear, and may your
lips be turned back like gums; that your legs may lose feeling from
the knee down, your eyes lose their sight, and your hands lose
their strength.
'Deformity and lameness and corruption upon you; flight and defeat
and the hatred of your kin. That shivering fever may stretch you
nine times, and that particularly at the time of Easter ('because,'
it is explained, 'it was at Easter time our Lord was put to death,
and it is the time He can best hear the curses of the poor').
'May a sore heart and cold flesh be upon you; may there be no
marrow or moisture in your bones. That clay may never be put over
your coffin-boards, but wind and a sharp blast on you from the
north.
'Baldness and nakedness come upon you, judgment from above, and the
curses of the crowd. May dragon's gall and poison mixed through it
be your best drink at the hour of death.'
Sometimes he left a scathing verse on a place where he was not well
treated, as: 'Oranmore without merriment. A little town in scarce
fields--a broken little town, with its back to the water, and with women
that have no understanding.'
He did not spare persons any more than places, especially if they were
well-to-do, for his gentleness was for the poor. An old woman who
remembers him says: 'He didn't care much about big houses. Just if they
were people he liked, and that he was friendly with them, he would be
kind enough to go in and see them.' A Mr. Burke, who met him going from
his house, asked how he had fared, and he said in a scornful verse:--
'Potatoes that were softer than the fog,
And with neither butter nor meat,
And milk that was sourer than apples in harvest--
That's what Raftery got from Burke of Kilfinn.'
'And Mr. Burke begged him to rhyme no more, but to come back, and he
would be well taken care of.' I am told of another house he abused and
that is now deserted: 'Frenchforth of the soot, that was wedded to the
smoke, that is all that remains of the property.... There were some of
them on mules, and some of them unruly, and the biggest of them were
smaller than asses, and the master cracking them with a stick;' 'but he
went no further than that, because he remembered the good treatment used
to be there in former times, and he wouldn't have said that much if it
wasn't for the servants that vexed him.' A satire, that is remembered
in Aran, was made with the better intention of helping a barefooted
girl, who had been kept waiting a long time for a pair of shoes she had
ordered. Raftery came, and sat down before the shoemaker's house, and
began:--
'A young little girl without sense, the ground tearing her feet, is
not satisfied yet by the lying Peter Glynn. Peter Glynn, the liar,
in his little house by the side of the road, is without the
strength in his arms to slip together a pair of brogues.'
'And, before he had finished the lines, Peter Glynn ran out and called
to him to stop, and he set at work on the shoes then and there.' He even
ventured to poke a little satire at a priest sometimes. 'He went into
the chapel at Kilchreest one time, and there was some cabbage after
being stolen from a garden, and the priest was speaking about it.
Raftery was at the bottom of the chapel, and at last he called out in
verse:--"What a lot of talk about cabbage! If there was meat with it, it
would feed the whole parish!" The priest didn't mind, but afterwards he
came down, and said: "Where is the cabbage man?" and asked him to make
some more verses about it; but whether he did or not I don't know.' And
another time, I am told: 'A priest wanted to teach him the rite of lay
baptism; for there were scattered houses a priest might take a long time
getting to, away from the roads, and certain persons were authorized to
give the rite. So the priest put his hat in Raftery's hand, and told him
the words to say; but it is what he said: "I baptize you without either
foot or hand, without salt or tow, beer or drink. Your father was a ram
and your mother was a sheep, and your like never came to be baptized
before." He was put under a curse, too, one time by a priest, and he
made a song about him; but he said he put his frock out of the bargain,
and it was only the priest's own body he would speak about. And the
priest let him alone after that.' And an old basket-maker, who had told
me some of these things, said at the end: 'That is why the poets had to
be banished before in the time of St. Columcill. Sure no one could stand
the satire of them.'