A man near Oranmore says: 'There used to be great talk of the Fianna;
and everyone had the poems about them till Raftery came, and he put them
out. For when the people got Raftery's songs in their heads, they could
think of nothing else: his songs put out everything else. I remember
when I was a boy of ten, I was so taken up with his rhymes and songs, I
had them all off. And I heard he was coming one night to a stage he had
below there where he used to come now and again. And I begged my father
to bring me with him that night, and he did; but whatever happened,
Raftery didn't come that time, and the next year he died.'
But it is hard to judge of the quality of Raftery's poems. Some of them
have probably been lost altogether. There are already different versions
of those written out in manuscript books, and of these books many have
disappeared or been destroyed, and some have been taken to America by
emigrants. It is said that when he was on his deathbed, he was very
sorry that his songs had not all been taken down; and that he dictated
one he composed there to a young man who wrote it down in Irish, but
could not read his own writing when he had done, and that vexed Raftery;
and then a man came in, and he asked him to take down all his songs, and
he could have them for himself; but he said, 'If I did, I'd always be
called Raftery,' and he went out again.
I hear the people say now and then: 'If he had had education, he would
have been the greatest poet in the world.' I cannot but be sorry that
his education went so far as it did, for 'he used to carry a book about
with him--a Pantheon--about the heathen gods and goddesses; and whoever
he'd get that was able to read, he'd get him to read it to him, and then
he'd keep them in his mind, and use them as he wanted them.' If he had
been born a few decades later, he would have been caught, like other
poets of the time, in the formulas of English verse. As it was, both his
love poems and his religious poems were caught in the formulas imported
from Greece and from Rome; and any formula must make a veil between the
prophet who has been on the mountain top, and the people who are waiting
at its foot for his message. The dreams of beauty that formed themselves
in the mind of the blind poet become flat and vapid when he embodies
them in the well-worn names of Helen and Venus. The truths of God that
he strove in his last years, as he says, 'to have written in the book of
the people,' left those unkindled whose ears were already wearied with
the well-known words 'the keys of Heaven,' 'penance, fasts, and alms,'
to whom it was an old tale to hear of hell as a furnace, and the grave
as a dish for worms. When he gets away from the formulas, he has often a
fine line on death or on judgment; the cheeks of the dead are 'cold as
the snow that is at the back of the sun;' the careless--those who 'go
out looking at their sheep on Sunday instead of going to Mass'--are
warned that 'on the side of the hill of the tears there will be Ochone!'
His love songs are many; and they were not always thought to bring ill
luck; for I am told of a girl 'that was not handsome at all, but ugly,
that he made a song about her for civility; for she used to be in a
house where he used to lodge, and the song got her a husband; and there
is a son of hers living now down in Clare-Galway.' And an old woman
tells me, with a sigh of regret for what might have been, that she saw
Raftery one time at a dance, and he spoke to her and said: 'Well planed
you are; the carpenter that planed you knew his trade.' 'And I said:
"Better than you know yours;" for there were two or three of the strings
of his fiddle broke. And then he said something about O'Meara, that
lived near us; and my father got vexed at what he said, and would let
him speak no more with me. And if it wasn't for him speaking about
O'Meara, and my father getting vexed, he might have made words about me
like he did for Mary Hynes and for Mary Brown.'
'Bridget Vesach,' which I have heard in many cottages, as well as from
the old woman in Gort Workhouse, begins: 'I would wed courteous Bridget
without coat, shoe, or shirt. Treasure of my heart, if it were possible
for me, I would fast for you nine meals, without food, without drink,
without any share of anything, on an island of Lough Erne, with desire
for you and me to be together till we should settle our case.... My
heart started with trouble, and I was frightened nine times that morning
that I heard you were not to be found.... I would sooner be stretched by
you with nothing under us but heather and rushes, than be listening to
the cuckoos that are stirring at the break of day.... I am in grief and
in sorrow since you slipped from me across the mearings.'
Another love poem, 'Mairin Stanton,' shows his habit of mixing
comparisons drawn from the classics with those drawn from nature:--
'There's a bright flower by the side of the road, and she beats
Deirdre in the beauty of her voice; or I might say Helen, Queen of
the Greeks, she for whose sake hundreds died at Troy.
'There is light and brightness in her as in those others; her
little mouth is as sweet as the cuckoo on the branch. You would not
find a mind like hers in any woman since the pearl died that was in
Ballylee.
'To see under the sky a woman settled like her walking on the road
on a fine sunny day, the light flashing from the whiteness of her
breast would give sight to a man without eyes.
'There is the love of hundreds in her face, and there is the
promise of the evening star. If she had been living in the time of
the gods, it is not Venus that would have had the apple.
'Her hair falls down below her knees, waving and winding to the
mouth of her shoes; her locks spread out wide and pale like dew,
they leave a brightness on the road behind her.
'She is the girl that has been taught the nicest of all whose eyes
still open to the sun; and if the estate of Lord Lucan belonged to
me, on the strength of my cause this jewel would be mine.
'Her slender lime-white shape, her face like flowers, her neck, her
cheek, and her amber hair; Virgil, Cicero, and Homer could tell of
nothing like her; she is like the dew in the time of harvest.
'If you could see this plant moving or dancing, you could not but
love the flower of the branch. If I cannot get a hundred words with
Mairin Stanton, I do not think my life will last long.
'She said "Good morrow" early and pleasantly; she drank my health,
and gave me a stool, and it not in the corner. At the time that I
am ready to go on my way I will stay talking and talking with her.'
The 'pearl that was at Ballylee' was poor Mary Hynes, of whom I have
already spoken. His song on her is very popular; 'a great song, so that
her name is sung through the three parishes.' She must have been
beautiful, for many who knew her still speak of her beauty, of her long,
shining hair, and the 'little blushes in her cheeks.' An old woman says:
'I never can think of her but I'll get a trembling, she was so nice; and
if she was to begin talking, she'd keep you laughing till daybreak.'
But others say: 'It was the poet that made her so handsome'; or,
'whatever she was, he made twice as much of it.' I give one or two
verses of the song:--
'There was no part of Ireland I did not travel: from the rivers to
the tops of the mountains, to the edge of Lough Greine, whose mouth
is hidden; but I saw no beauty but was behind hers.
'Her hair was shining, and her brows were shining too; her face was
like herself, her mouth pleasant and sweet. She is the pride, and I
give her the branch. She is the shining flower of Ballylee.'
Even many miles from Ballylee, if the _posin glégeal_--the 'shining
flower'--is spoken of, it is always known that it is Mary Hynes who is
meant.
Raftery is said to have spent the last seven years of his life praying
and making religious songs, because death had told him in a vision that
he had only seven years to live. His own account of the vision was given
me by the man at whose house he died. 'I heard him telling my father one
time, that he was sick in Galway, and there was a mug beside the bed,
and in the night he heard a noise, and he thought it was the cat was on
the table, and that she'd upset the mug; and he put his hand out, and
what he felt was the bones and the thinness of death. And his sight came
to him, and he saw where his wrapper was hanging on the wall. And death
said he had come to bring him away, or else one of the neighbours that
lived in such a house. And after they had talked a while, he said he
would give him a certain time before he'd come for him again, and he
went away. And in the morning when his wife came in, he asked where did
she hang his wrapper the night before, and she told him it was in such a
place, and that was the very place he saw it, so he knew he had had his
sight. And then he sent to the house that had been spoken of to know how
was the man of it, and word came back that he was dead. I remember when
he was dying, a friend of his, one Cooney, came in to see him, and said:
"Well, Raftery, the time is not up yet that death gave you to live." And
he said: "The Church and myself have it made out that it was not death
that was there, but the devil that came to tempt me."
His description of death in his poem on the 'Vision,' is vivid and
unconventional:--
'I had a vision in my sleep last night, between sleeping and
waking, a figure standing beside me, thin, miserable, sad, and
sorrowful; the shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the
tears down his cheeks. His ribs were bending like the bottom of a
riddle; his nose thin, that it would go through a cambric needle;
his shoulders hard and sharp, that they would cut tobacco; his head
dark and bushy like the top of a hill; and there is nothing I can
liken his fingers to. His poor bones without any kind of covering;
a withered rod in his hand, and he looking in my face. It is not
worth my while to be talking about him; I questioned him in the
name of God.'