Poets and Dreamers Part 2

Some of his poems of places, usually places in Mayo, the only ones he had ever looked on--for smallpox took his sight away in his childhood--have much charm. 'Cnocin Saibhir,' 'the Plentiful Little Hill,' must have sounded like a dream of Tir-nan-og to many a poor farmer in a sodden-thatched cottage:--

'After the Christmas, with the help of Christ, I will never stop if I am alive; I will go to the sharp-edged little hill; for it is a fine place, without fog falling; a blessed place that the sun shines on, and the wind doesn't rise there or any thing of the sort.

'And if you were a year there, you would get no rest, only sitting up at night and eternally drinking.

'The lamb and the sheep are there; the cow and the calf are there; fine lands are there without heath and without bog. Ploughing and seed-sowing in the right month, and plough and harrow prepared and ready; the rent that is called for there, they have means to pay it. There is oats and flax and large-eared barley.... There are beautiful valleys with good growth in them, and hay. Rods grow there, and bushes and tufts, white fields are there, and respect for trees; shade and shelter from wind and rain; priests and friars reading their book; spending and getting is there, and nothing scarce.'

In another song in the same manner on 'Cilleaden,' he says:--

'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 pa.s.sion' 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 G.o.d 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 gra.s.s. 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 gra.s.s. 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 G.o.d, 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 gra.s.s 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.'

V.

His life was always the wandering, homeless life of the old bards. After Cromwell's time, as the houses they went to grew poorer, they had added music to their verse-making; and Raftery's little fiddle helped to make him welcome in the Ireland which was, in spite of many sorrows, as merry and light-hearted up to the time of the great famine as England had been up to the time of the Puritans. 'He had no place of his own,' I am told, 'but to be walking the country. He did well to die before the bad years came. He used to play at Kiltartan cross for the dancing of a Sunday evening. And when he'd come to any place, the people would gather and he'd give them a dance; for there was three times as many people in the world then as what there is now. The people would never have let him want; but as to money, what could he do with it, and he with no place of his own?' An old woman near Craughwell says: 'He used to come here often; it was like home to him. He wouldn't have a dance then; my father liked better to be sitting listening to his talk and his stories; only when we'd come in, he'd take the fiddle and say: "Now we must give the youngsters a tune."' And an old man, who is still lamenting the fall in prices after the Battle of Waterloo, remembers having seen him 'one time at a shebeen house that used to be down there in Clonerle. He was playing the fiddle, and there used to be two couples at a time dancing; and they would put two halfpence in the plate, and Raftery would rattle them and say: "It's good for the two sorts to be together," and there would be great laughing.' And it is also said 'there was a welcome before him in every house he'd come to; and wherever he went, they'd think the time too short he would be with them.' There is a story I often hear told about the marriage near Cappaghtagle of a poor servant boy and girl, 'that was only a marriage and not a wedding, till Raftery chanced to come in; and he made it one. There wasn't a bit but bread and herrings in the house; but he made a great song about the grand feast they had, and he put every sort of thing into the song--all the beef that was in Ireland; and went to the Claddagh, and didn't leave a fish in the sea. And there was no one at all at it; but he brought all the _bacach_ and poor men in Ireland, and gave them a pound each. He went to bed after, without them giving him a drop to drink; but he didn't mind that when they hadn't got it to give.'

The wandering, unrestrained life was probably to his mind; and I do not think there is a word of discontent or complaint in any of his verses, though he was always poor, and must often have known hardship. In the 'Talk with the Bush,' he describes in his whimsical, exaggerated way, a wetting, which must have been one of very many.

'It chanced that I was travelling and the rain was heavy; I stepped aside, and not without reason, till I'd get a wall or a bush that would shelter me.

'I didn't meet at the side of a gap only an old, withered, miserable bush by the side of the wall, and it bent with the west wind. I stepped under it, and it was a wet place; torrents of rain coming down from all quarters, east and west and straight downwards; its equal I couldn't see, unless it is seeds winnowed through a riddle. It was sharp, angry, fierce, and stormy, like a deer running and racing past me. The storm was drowning the country, and my case was pitiful, and I suffering without cause.

'An hour and a quarter it was raining; there isn't a drop that fell but would fill a quart and put a heap on it afterwards; there's not a wheat or rape mill in the neighbourhood but it would set going in the middle of a field.'

At last relief comes:--

'It was shortly then the rain grew weak, the sun shone, and the wind rose. I moved on, and I smothered and drowned in wet, till I came to a little house, and there was a welcome before me. Many quarts of water I squeezed from my skirt and my cape. I hung my hat on a nail, and I lying in a sweet flowery bed. But I was up again in a little while. We began sports and pleasures; and it was with pride we spent the night.'

But there is a verse in his 'Argument with Whisky' that seems to have a wistful thought in it, perhaps of the settled home of his rival, Callinan:--

'Cattle is a nice thing for a man to have, and his share of land to reap wheat and barley. Money in the chest, and a fire in the evening time; and to be able to give shelter to a man on his road; a hat and shoes in the fashion--I think, indeed, that would be much better than to be going from place to place drinking _uisge beatha_.'

And there is a little sadness in the verses he made in some house, when a stranger asked who he was:--

'I am Raftery the poet, full of hope and love; with eyes without light, with gentleness without misery.

'Going west on my journey with the light of my heart; weak and tired to the end of my road.

'I am now, and my back to a wall, playing music to empty pockets.'

'He was a thin man,' I am told by one who knew him, 'not very tall, with a long frieze coat and corduroy trousers. He was very strong; and he told my father there was never any man he wrestled with but he could throw him, and that he could lie on his back and throw up a bag with four hundred of wheat in it, and take it up again. He couldn't see a stim; but he would walk all the roads, and give the right turn, without ever touching the wall. My father was wondering at him one time they were out together; and he said: "Wait till we come to the turn to Athenry, and don't tell me of it, and see if I don't make it out right."

And sure enough, when they came to it, he gave the right turn, and just in the middle.' This is explained by what another man tells me:--'There was a blind piper with him one time in Gort, and they set out together to go to Ballylee, and it was late, and they couldn't find the stile that led down there, near Early's house. And they would have stopped there till somebody would come by, but Raftery said he'd go back to Gort and step it again; and so he did, turned back a mile to Gort, and started from there. He counted every step that he stepped out; and when he got to the stile, he stopped straight before it.' And I was told also there used to be a flagstone put beside the bog-holes to leap from, and Raftery would leap as well as any man. He would count his steps back from the flag, and take a run and alight on the other side.

VI.

His knowledge and his poetic gift are often supposed to have been given to him by the invisible powers, who grow visible to those who have lost their earthly sight. An old woman who had often danced to his music, said:--'When he went to his rest at night, it's then he'd make the songs in the turn of a hand, and you would wonder in the morning where he got them.' And a man who 'was too much taken up with sport and hurling when he was a boy to think much about him,' says: 'He got the gift. It's said he was asked which would he choose, music or the talk. If he chose music, he would have been the greatest musician in the world; but he chose the talk, and so he was a great poet. Where could he have found all the words he put in his songs if it wasn't for that?' An old woman, who is more orthodox, says:--'I often used to see him when I was a little child, in my father's house at Corker. He'd often come in there, and here to Coole House he used to come as well. He couldn't see a stim, and that is why he had such great knowledge. G.o.d gave it to him.

And his songs have gone all through the world; and he had a voice that was like the wind.'

Legends are already growing up about his death. It has been said that 'he knew the very day his time would be up; and he went to Galway, and brought a plank to the house he was stopping at, and he put it in the loft; and he told the people of the house his time was come, and bid them make a coffin for him with the plank--and he was dead before morning.' And another story says he died alone in an empty house, and that flames were seen about the house all night; and 'the flames were the angels waking him.' But many told me he had died in the house of a man near Craughwell; and one autumn day I went there to look for it, and the first person I asked was able to tell me that the house where Raftery had died was the other side of Craughwell, a mile and a half away. It was a warm, hazy day; and as I walked along the flat, deserted road that Raftery had often walked, I could see few landmarks--only a few more grey rocks, or a few more stunted hazel bushes in one stone-walled field than in another. At last I came to a thatched cottage; and when I saw an old man sitting outside it, with hat and coat of the old fashion, I felt sure it was he who had been with Raftery at the last. He was ready to talk about him, and told me how he had come there to die. 'I was a young chap at that time. It must have been in the year 1835, for my father died in '36, and I think it was a year before him that Raftery died. What did he die of? Of weakness. He had been bet up in Galway with some fit of sickness he had; and then he came to gather a little money about the country, and when he got here he was bet up again. He wasn't an old man--only about seventy years. He was in the bed for about a fortnight. When he got bad, my father said it was best get a priest for him; but the parish priest was away. But we saw Father Nagle pa.s.sing the road, and I went out and brought him in, and he gave him absolution, and anointed him. He had no pain; only his feet were cold, and the boys used to be warming a stone in the fire and putting it to them in the bed. My mother wanted to send to Galway, where his wife and his daughter and his son were stopping, so that they would come and care him; but he wouldn't have them. Someway he didn't think they treated him well.'

I had been told that the priest had refused him absolution when he was dying, until he forgave some enemy; and that he had said afterwards, 'If I forgave him with my mouth, I didn't with my heart'; but this was not true. 'Father Nagle made no delay in anointing him; but there was a carpenter down the road there he said too much to, and annoyed him one time; and the carpenter had a touch of the poet too, and was a great singer, and he came out and beat him, and broke his fiddle; and I remember when he was dying, the priest bringing in the carpenter, and making them forgive one another, and shake hands; and the carpenter said: "If two brothers were to have a falling out, they'd forgive one another--and why wouldn't we?" He was buried in Killeenan; it wasn't a very big funeral, but all the people of the village came to it. He used often to come and stop with us.... It was of a Christmas Eve he died: and he had always said that, if G.o.d had a hand in it, it was of a Christmas Day he'd die.'

I went to Killeenan to look for his grave. There is nothing to mark it; but two old men who had been at his funeral pointed it out to me. There is a ruined church in the graveyard, which is crowded; 'there are people killing one another now to get a place in it.' I was asked into a house close by; and its owner said with almost a touch of jealousy: 'I think it was coming in here Raftery was the time he died; but he got bet up, and turned in at the house below. It was of a Christmas Eve he died, and that shows he was blessed; there's a blessing on them that die at Christmas. It was at night he was buried, for Christmas Day no work could be done, but my father and a few others made a little gathering to pay for a coffin, and it was made by a man in the village on St.

Stephen's Day; and then he was brought here, and the people from the villages followed him, for they all had a wish for Raftery. But night was coming on when they got here; and in digging the grave there was a big stone in it, and the boys thought they would put him in a barn and take the night out of him. But my mother--the Lord have mercy on her--had a great veneration for Raftery; and she sent out two mould candles lighted; for in those days the women used to have their own mould, and to make their own candles for Christmas. And we held the candles there where the grave is, near the gable end of the church; and my brother went down in the grave and got the stone out, and we buried him. And there was a sharp breeze blowing at the time, but it never quenched the candles or moved the flame of them, and that shows that the Lord had a hand in him.'

He and all the neighbours were glad to hear that there is soon to be a stone over the grave. 'He is worthy of it; he is well worthy of it,'

they kept saying. A man who was digging sand by the roadside, took me to his house, and his wife showed me a little book, in which the 'Repentance' and other poems had been put down for her, in phonetic Irish, by a beggar who had once stayed in the house. 'Many who go to America hear Raftery's songs sung out there,' they told me with pride.

As I went back along the silent road, there was suddenly a sound of horses and a rushing and waving about me, and I found myself in the midst of the County Galway Fox Hounds, coming back from cub-hunting. The English M.F.H. and his wife rode by; and I wondered if they had ever heard of the poet whose last road this had been. Most likely not; for it is only among the people that his name has been kept in remembrance.

There is still a peasant poet here and there, making songs in the 'sweet Irish tongue,' in which death spoke to Raftery; and I think these will be held in greater honour as the time of awakening goes on. But the nineteenth century has been a time of swift change in many countries; and in looking back on that century in Ireland, there seem to have been two great landslips--the breaking of the continuity of the social life of the people by the famine, and the breaking of the continuity of their intellectual life by the shoving out of the language. It seems as if there were no place left now for the wandering versemaker, and that Raftery may have closed the long procession that had moved unbroken during so many centuries, on its journey to 'the meadow of the dead.'

1900.