en
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,