'I leave it in my will that my heart rises as the wind rises, or as
the fog scatters, when I think upon Carra and the two towns below
it, on the two-mile bush, and on the plains of Mayo.... And if I
were standing in the middle of my people, age would go from me, and
I would be young again.'
He writes of friends that he has made in Galway as well as in Mayo, a
weaver, a carpenter, a priest at Kilcolgan who is 'the good Christian,
the clean wheat of the Gael, the generous messenger, the standing tree
of the clergy.' Some of his eulogies both on persons and places are
somewhat spoiled by grotesque exaggeration. Even Cilleaden has not only
all sorts of native fishes, 'as plenty as turf,' and all sorts of native
trees, but is endowed with 'tortoises,' with 'logwood and mahogany.' His
country weaver must not only have frieze and linen in his loom, but
satin and cambric. A carpenter near Ardrahan, Seaghan Conroy, is praised
with more simplicity for his 'quick, lucky work,' and for the pleasure
he takes in it. 'I never met his master; the trade was in his nature';
and he gives a long list of all the things he could make: doors and all
that would be wanted for a big house'; mills and ploughs and
spinning-wheels 'nicely finished with a clean chisel'; 'all sorts of
things for the living, and a coffin for the dead. And with all this 'he
cares little for money, but to spend, as he earns, decently. And if he
was up for nine nights, you wouldn't see the sign of a drop on him.'
Another of his more simple poems is what Spenser would call an 'elegie
or friend's passion' on a player on fiddle or pipes, Thomas O'Daly, that
gives him a touch of kinship with the poets who have mourned their
Astrophel, their Lycidas, their Adonais, their Thyrsis. This is how I
have been helped to put it into English by a young working farmer,
sitting by a turf fire one evening, when his day in the fields was
over:--
'It was Thomas O'Daly that roused up young people and scattered
them, and since death played on him, may God give him grace. The
country is all sorrowful, always talking, since their man of sport
died that would win the goal in all parts with his music.
'The swans on the water are nine times blacker than a blackberry
since the man died from us that had pleasantness on the top of his
fingers. His two grey eyes were like the dew of the morning that
lies on the grass. And since he was laid in the grave, the cold is
getting the upper hand.
'If you travel the five provinces, you would not find his equal for
countenance or behaviour, for his equal never walked on land or
grass. High King of Nature, you who have all powers in yourself, he
that wasn't narrow-hearted, give him shelter in heaven for it.
'He was the beautiful branch. In every quarter that he ever knew he
would scatter his fill and not gather. He would spend the estate of
the Dalys, their beer and their wine. And that he may be sitting in
the chair of grace, in the middle of Paradise.
'A sorrowful story on death, it 's he is the ugly chief that did
treachery, that didn't give him credit, O strong God, for a little
time.
'There are young women, and not without reason, sorry and
heart-broken and withered, since he was left at the church. Their
hair thrown down and hanging, turned grey on their head.
'No flower in any garden, and the leaves of the trees have leave to
cry, and they falling on the ground. There is no green flower on
the tops of the tufts, since there did a boarded coffin go on Daly.
'There is sorrow on the men of mirth, a clouding over the day, and
no trout swim in the river. Orpheus on the harp, he lifted up
everyone out of their habits; and he that stole what Argus was
watching the time he took away Io; Apollo, as we read, gave them
teaching, and Daly was better than all these musicians.
'A hundred wouldn't be able to put together his actions and his
deeds and his many good works. And Raftery says this much for Daly,
because he liked him.'
Though his praises are usually all for the poor, for the people, he has
left one beautiful lament for a landowner:--
'There's no dew or grass on Cluan Leathan. The cuckoo is not to be
seen on the furze; the leaves are withering and the trees
complaining of the cold. There is no sun or moon in the air or in
the sky, or no light in the stars coming down, with the stretching
of O'Kelly in the grave.
'My grief to tell it! he to be laid low; the man that did not bring
grief or trouble on any heart, that would give help to those that
were down.
'No light on the day like there was; the fruits not growing; no
children on the breast; there's no return in the grain; the plants
don't blossom as they used since O'Kelly with the fair hair went
away; he that used to forgive us a great share of the rent.
'Since the children of Usnach and Deirdre went to the grave and
Cuchulain, who, as the stories tell us, would gain victory in every
step he would take; since he died, such a story never came of
sorrow or defeat; since the Gael were sold at Aughrim, and since
Owen Roe died, the Branch.'