Poets and Dreamers | Page 3

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 in the Son of God, my grief! and it
is of no use for me; and it was Conall and his wife hung Daly, and may
they be paid for it!
'But oh! young woman, while I live, I put death on the village where
you will be; plague and death on it; and may the flood rise over it; that
much is no sin at all, O bright God; and I pray with longing it may fall
on the man that hung Daly; that left his people and his children crying.
'O stretch out your limbs! The air is murky overhead; there is darkness

on the sun, and the fish do not leap in the water; there is no dew on the
grass, and the birds do not sing sweetly. With sorrow after you, Daly,
till death, there never will be fruit on the trees.
'And that is the true man, that didn't humble himself or lower himself to
the Gall; Anthony Daly, O Son of God! He was that with us always,
without a lie. But he died a good Irishman; and he never bowed the
head to any man; and it was with false swearing that Daly was hung,
and with the strength of the Gall.
'If I were a clerk--kind, light, cheerful with the pen--it is I would write
your ways in clear Irish on a flag above your head. A thousand and
eight hundred and sixteen, and four put to that, from the coming of the
Son of God, to the death of Daly at the Castle of Seefin.'
I have heard, and have also seen in manuscript, a terrible list of curses
that he hurled at the head of another poet, Seaghan Burke. But these
were, I think, looked on as a mere professional display, and do not
seem to have any ill effect.
Here are some of them:--
'That God may perish you on the mountain-side, without a priest,
bishop, or clerk. Seven years may you be senseless and without wit,
going from door to door as an unfortunate creature.
'May you have a mouth that will go back to your ear, and may your lips
be turned back like gums; that your legs may lose feeling from the knee
down, your eyes lose their sight, and your hands lose their strength.
'Deformity and lameness and corruption upon you; flight and defeat
and the hatred of your kin. That shivering fever may stretch you nine
times, and that particularly at the time of Easter ('because,' it is
explained, 'it was at Easter time our Lord was put to death, and it is the
time He can best hear the curses of the poor').
'May a sore heart and cold flesh be upon you; may there be no marrow
or moisture in your bones. That clay may never be put over your

coffin-boards, but wind and a sharp blast on you from the north.
'Baldness and nakedness come upon you, judgment from above, and the
curses of the crowd. May dragon's gall and poison mixed through it be
your best drink at the hour of death.'
Sometimes he left a scathing verse on a place where he was not well
treated, as: 'Oranmore without merriment. A little town in scarce
fields--a broken little town, with its back to the water, and with women
that have no understanding.'
He did not spare persons any more than places, especially if they were
well-to-do, for his gentleness was for the poor. An old woman who
remembers him says: 'He didn't care much about big houses. Just if
they were people he liked, and that he was friendly with them,