eing 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.'

IV.

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 nex