'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 grass 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.