When at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the poets O'Lewy and
O'Clery and their supporters held a 'Contention,' the results were
written down in a volume containing 7,000 lines. I think the greater
number of the 'Contentions' between Raftery and his fellow-poets were
never written down; but the country people still discuss them with all
the eagerness of partisans. On old man from Athenry says: 'Raftery
travelled Ireland, challenging all the poets of that time. There were
hundreds of country poets in those days, and a welcome for them all.
Raftery had enough to do to beat them, but he was the best; his poetry
was the gift of God, and his poems are sung as far away as Limerick and
Dublin.' There is a story of his knocking at a door one night, when he
was looking for the house of a poet he had heard of and wanted to
challenge, and saying: 'I am a poet seeing shelter'; and a girl answered
him from within with a verse, saying he must be a blind man to be out so
late looking for shelter; and then he knew it was the house he was
looking for. And it is said that the daughter of another poet was on his
way to see in Clare, gave him such a sharp answer when he met her
outside the house that he turned back and would not contend with her
father at all. And he is said to have 'hunted another poet Daly--hunted
him all through Ireland.' But these other poets do not seem to have left
a great name. There was a Connemara poet, Sweeny, that was put under a
curse by the priests 'because he used to make so much fun at the wakes';
and in one of Raftery's poems he thanks Sweeny for having come to his
help in some dispute; and there was 'one John Burke, who was a good
poet, too; he and Raftery would meet at fairs and weddings, and be
trying which would put down the other.' I am told of an 'attack' they
made on each other one day on the fair green of Cappaghtagle. Burke
said: 'After all your walk of land and callows, Burke is before you at
the fair of Cappagh.' And Raftery said: 'You are not Burke but a breed
of _scatties_, That's all over the country gathering _praties_; When I'm
at the table filling glasses, You are in the corner with your feet in
the ashes.' Then Burke said: 'Raftery a poet, and he with bracked
(speckled) shins, And he playing music with catgut; Raftery the poet,
and his back to the wall, And he playing music for empty pockets.
There's no one cares for his music at all, but he does be always craving
money.' For he was sometimes accused of love of money; 'he wouldn't play
for empty pockets, and he'd make the plate rattle at the end of a
dance.'
But his most serious rival in his own part of the country was Callinan,
the well-to-do farmer who lived near Craughwell, of whom the old women
in the workhouse spoke. I have heard some of Callinan's poems and songs;
but I do not find the imaginative power of Raftery in them. He seems, in
distinction to him, to be the poet of the domestic affections, of the
settled classes. His songs have melody and good sentiments; and they are
often accompanied by a rhymed English version, made by his brother, a
lesser poet. The favourite among them is a song on a wooden beetle, lost
by his wife when washing clothes at the river. She is made to lament the
loss of 'so good a servant' in a sort of allegory; and then its journey
is traced from the river to the sea. An old man gives me a little memory
of him: 'I saw Callinan one time when we went to dig potatoes for him at
his own place, the other side of Craughwell. We went into the house for
dinner; and we were in a hurry, and he was sitting by the hearth talking
all the time; for he was a great talker, so that the veins of his neck
swelled up. And he was telling us about the song he made about his own
Missus when she was out washing by the river. He was up to eighty years
at that time.' And there are accounts of the making of some of his songs
that show his kindly disposition and amiability. 'One time there was a
baby in the house, and there was a dance going on near, and Mrs.
Callinan was a young woman; and she said she'd go for a bit to the
dance-house; and she bid Callinan rock the cradle till she'd come back.
But she never came back till morning, and there he was rocking the
cradle still; and he had a song composed while she was away about the
time of a man's life, and the hours of the day, and the seasons of the
year; how when a man is young he is strong, and then he grows old and
passes away, and goes to the feast of the Saviour; and about the day,
how bright the morning is, and the birds singing; and a man goes out to
work, and he comes in tired out, and sits by the fire to talk with his
neighbour; and the night comes on, and he says his prayers, and thinks
of the feast of the Saviour; and about the seasons, the spring so nice,
and the summer for work; and autumn brings the harvest, and winter
brings Christmas, the feast of the Saviour. In Irish and English he made
that.' And this is another story: 'A carpenter made a plough for
Callinan one time, and when it came, it was the worst ever made; and he
said to his brother: "I'll make a song that will cut him down
altogether." But his brother said: "Do not, for if you cut him down, it
will take his means of living from him, but make a song in his praise."
And he did so, for he wouldn't like to do him any harm.' I have asked if
he made any love-songs, and was told of one he had made 'about a girl he
met going to a bog. He praised herself first, and then he said he had
information as well that she had fifty gold guineas saved up.'
His having been well off seems to make his poetic merit the greater in
the eyes of farmers; for one says: 'He was as good a poet, for he had a
plough and horses and a good way of living, and never sang in any
public-house; but Raftery had no way of living but to go round and to
mark some house to go to, and then all the neighbours would gather in to
hear him.' Another says: 'Raftery was the best poet, for he had nothing
else to do, and laid his mind to it; but Callinan was a strong farmer,
and had other things to think of;' and another says: 'Callinan was very
apt: it was all Raftery could do to beat him;' and another sums up by
saying: 'The both of them was great.' But a supporter of Raftery says:
'He was the best; he put his words so strong and stiff, following one
another.'
I had been often told, by supporters of either side, that there was one
contest between the two, at which Callinan 'made Raftery cry tears
down;' and I wondered how it was that his wit had so far betrayed him.
It has been explained to me lately. Raftery had made a long poem, 'The
Hunt,' in which he puts 'a Writer' in the place of the fox, and calls on
all the gentlemen of Galway and Mayo, and even on 'Sarsfield from
Limerick,' to come and hunt him through their respective neighbourhoods
with a pack of hounds. It contains many verses; and he seems to have
improvised others in the different places where he sang it. In the
written copy I have seen, Burke is the 'Writer' who is thus hunted. But
he probably put in the name of any other rival from time to time. This
is the story: 'He and the Callinans were sometimes vexed with one
another, but they'd make friends after; but there was one day he was put
down by them. There was a funeral going on at Killeenan, and Raftery was
there; and he was asked into the corpse-house afterwards, and the people
asked him for the song about Callinan, and he began hunting him all
through the country, and the people were laughing and making him go on;
but Callinan's brother had come in, and was listening to him, and
Raftery didn't see him, being blind; and he brought him to Killeenan at
last, and he said: "Where can the rogue go now, unless he'll swim the
turlough?" And at that Callinan's brother stood up and said, "Who is it
you are calling a rogue?" And Raftery tried to laugh it off, and he
said, "You mustn't expect poetry and truth to go together." But Callinan
said: "I'll give you poetry that's truth as well;" and he began to say
off some verses his brother had made on Raftery; and Raftery was choked
up that time, and hadn't a word.' This story is corroborated by an
eye-witness who said to me: 'It was in this house he was on the night
Callinan made him cry. My father was away at the time; if he had been
there, he never would have let Callinan come into the house unknown to
Raftery.' I have not heard all of Callinan's poem, but this is part of
it:--
'He left the County Mayo; he was hunted up from the country of the
brothons' (thick bed-coverings, then made in Mayo) 'without any for
the night, nor any shift for bedding, but with an old yellow
blanket with a thousand patches; he had a black trouser down to the
ground with two hundred holes and forty pieces; he had long legs
like the shank of a pipe, and a long great coat, for it is many the
dab he put in his pocket. His coat was greasy, and it was no
wonder, and an old grey hat as grey as snuff as it was many the day
it was in the dunghill.'
It is said that 'Raftery could have answered that song better, but he
had no back here; and Callinan was well-to-do, and had so many of his
family and so many friends.' But others say there were some allusions in
it to the poverty of his home, that had become known through a servant
girl from Raftery's birth-place. But I think even Callinan's friends are
sorry now that Raftery was ever made to 'cry tears down.'