r verses made by him that have been less legendary in
their effect. The story is:--'It was Anthony Daly, a carpenter, was
hanged at Seefin. It was the two Z's got him put away. He was brought
before a judge in Galway, and accused of being a Captain of Whiteboys,
and it was sworn against him that he fired at Mr. X. He was a one-eyed
man; and he said: "If I did, though I have but one eye, I would have hit
him"--for he was a very good shot; and he asked that some object should
be put up, and he would show the judge that he would hit it, but he said
nothing else. Some were afraid he'd give up the names of the other
Whiteboys; but he did not. There was a gallows put up at Seefin; and he
was brought there sitting on his coffin in a cart. There were people all
the way along the road, and they were calling on him to break through
the crowd, and they'd save him; and some of the soldiers were Irish, and
they called back that if he did they'd only fire their guns in the air;
but he made no attempt, but went to the gallows quiet enough. There was
a man in Gort was telling me he saw it, planting potatoes he was at
Seefin that day. It was in the year 1820; and Raftery was there at the
hanging, and he made a song about it. The first verse of the song said:
"Wasn't that the good tree, that wouldn't let any branch that was on it
fall to the ground?" He meant by that that he didn't give up the names
of the other Whiteboys. And at the end he called down judgment from God
on the two Z's, and, if not on them, on their children. And they that
had land and farms in all parts, lost it after; and all they had
vanished; and the most of their children died--only two left, one a
friar, and the other living in the town.' And quite lately I have been
told by another neighbour, in corroboration, that a girl of the Z family
married into a family near his home the other day, and was coldly
received; and when my neighbour asked one of the family why this was, he
was told that 'those of her people that went so high ought to have gone
higher'--meaning that they themselves ought to have been on the gallows;
and then he knew that Raftery's curse was still having its effect. And
he had also heard that the grass had never grown again at Seefin.

This is a part of the song:--

'The evening of Friday of the Crucifixion, the Gael was under the
mercy of the Gall. It was as heavy the same day as when the only
Son of Mary was on the tree. I have hope