r I may say Helen, the affliction
of the Greeks'; and he writes of another country girl, that she is
'beyond Venus, in spite of all Homer wrote on her appearance, and
Cassandra also, and Io that bewitched Mars; beyond Minerva, and Juno,
the king's wife'; and he wishes 'they might be brought face to face with
her, that they might be confused':--

'She comes to me like a star through the mist; her hair is golden
and goes down to her shoes; her breast is the colour of white
sugar, or like bleached bone on the card-table; her neck is whiter
than the froth of the flood, or the swan coming from swimming....
If France and Spain belonged to me, I'd give it up to be along with
you.'

And he gives 'a thousand praises to God, that I didn't lose my wits on
account of her.' Raftery puts distinction into each one of his songs;
but when lesser poets, echoing the voices of so many generations, bring
in the same goddesses, and the same exaggerations, and the same amber
hair, monotony brings weariness at last.

There is an Aran song, 'Brigid na Casad,' that has more originality than
is usual:--

'Brigid's kiss was sweeter than the whole of the waters of Lough
Erne; or the first wheaten flour, worked with fresh honey into
dough; there are streams of bees' honey on every part of the
mountain, there is brown sugar thrown on all you take, Brigid, in
your hand.

'It is not more likely for water to change than for the mind of a
woman; and is it not a young man without courage will not run the
chance nine times? It's not nicer than you the swan is when he
comes to the shore swimming; it's not nicer than you the thrush is,
and he singing from tree to tree.'

And here is another, homely in the extreme in the beginning, and
suddenly rising to wild exaggeration:--

'Late on the evening of last Monday, and it raining, I chanced to
come into Seaghan's and I sat down. It is there I saw her near me
in the corner of the hearth; and her laugh was better to me than to
have her eyes down; her hair was shining like the wool of a sheep,
and brighter than the swan swimming. It is then I asked who owned
her, and it is with Frank Conneely she was.

'It is a good house belongs to Frank Conneely, the people say that
do be going to it; plenty of whiskey and punch going round, and
food without stint for a man to get; and it is what