'It chanced that I was travelling and the rain was heavy; I stepped aside, and not without reason, till I'd get a wall or a bush that would shelter me.
'I didn't meet at the side of a gap only an old, withered, miserable bush by the side of the wall, and it bent with the west wind. I stepped under it, and it was a wet place; torrents of rain coming down from all quarters, east and west and straight downwards; its equal I couldn't see, unless it is seeds winnowed through a riddle. It was sharp, angry, fierce, and stormy, like a deer running and racing past me. The storm was drowning the country, and my case was pitiful, and I suffering without cause.
'An hour and a quarter it was raining; there isn't a drop that fell but would fill a quart and put a heap on it afterwards; there's not a wheat or rape mill in the neighbourhood but it would set going in the middle of a field.'
At last relief comes:—
'It was shortly then the rain grew weak, the sun shone, and the wind rose. I moved on, and I smothered and drowned in wet, till I came to a little house, and there was a welcome before me. Many quarts of water I squeezed from my skirt and my cape. I hung my hat on a nail, and I lying in a sweet flowery bed. But I was up again in a little while. We began sports and pleasures; and it was with pride we spent the night.'
But there is a verse in his 'Argument with Whisky' that seems to have a wistful thought in it, perhaps of the settled home of his rival, Callinan:—
'Cattle is a nice thing for a man to have, and his share of land to reap wheat and barley. Money in the chest, and a fire in the evening time; and to be able to give shelter to a man on his road; a hat and shoes in the fashion—I think, indeed, that would be much better than to be going from place to place drinking uisge beatha.'
And there is a little sadness in the verses he made in some house, when 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.