The persons mentioned are associated by legend, story and tradition with
the neighbourhood of Thoor Ballylee or Ballylee Castle, where the poem
was written. Mrs. French lived at Peterswell in the eighteenth century
and was related to Sir Jonah Barrington, who described the incident of
the ear and the trouble that came of it. The peasant beauty and the blind
poet are Mary Hynes and Raftery, and the incident of the man drowned in
Cloone Bog is recorded in my ‘Celtic Twilight’. Hanrahan’s pursuit of the
phantom hare and hounds is from my ‘Stories of Red Hanrahan’. The ghosts
have been seen at their game of dice in what is now my bedroom, and the
old bankrupt man lived about a hundred years ago. According to one legend
he could only leave the Castle upon a Sunday because of his creditors,
and according to another he hid in the secret passage.