Poets and Dreamers | Page 5

in
manuscript. The bush, a forerunner of the 'Talking Oak' or the 'Father
of the Forest,' gives its recollections, which go back to the times of the
Firbolgs, the Tuatha De Danaan, 'without heart, without humanity'; the
Sons of the Gael; the heroic Fianna, who 'would never put more than
one man to fight against one'; Cuchulain 'of the Grey Sword, that broke
every gap'; till at last it comes to 'O'Rourke's wife that brought a blow
to Ireland': for it was on her account the English were first called in.
Then come the crimes of the English, made redder by the crime of
Martin Luther. Henry VIII 'turned his back on God and denied his first
wife.' Elizabeth 'routed the bishops and the Irish Church. James and
Charles laid sharp scourges on Ireland.... Then Cromwell and his hosts
swept through Ireland, cutting before him all he could. He gave estates
and lands to Cromwellians, and he put those that had a right to them on
mountains.' Whenever he brings history into his poems, the same
strings are touched. 'At the great judgment, Cromwell will be hiding,
and O'Neill in the corner. And I think if William can manage it at all,
he won't stand his ground against Sarsfield.' And a moral often comes
at the end, such as: 'Don't be without courage, but join together; God is
stronger than the Cromwellians, and the cards may turn yet.'
For Raftery had lived through the '98 Rebellion, and the struggle for
Catholic Emancipation; and he saw the Tithe War, and the Repeal
movement; and it is natural that his poems, like those of the poets
before him, should reflect the desire of his people for 'the mayntenance
of their own lewde libertye,' that had troubled Spenser in his time.
Here are some verses from his 'Cuis da ple,' 'cause to plead,' composed
at the time of the Tithe War:--

'The two provinces of Munster are afoot, and will not stop till tithes are
overthrown, and rents accordingly; and if help were given them, and we
to stand by Ireland, the English guard would be feeble, and every gap
made easy. The Gall (English) will be on their back without ever
returning again; and the Orangemen bruised in the borders of every
town, a judge and jury in the courthouse for the Catholics, England
dead, and the crown upon the Gael....
'There is many a fine man at this time sentenced, from Cork to Ennis
and the town of Roscrea, and fair-haired boys wandering and departing
from the streets of Kilkenny to Bantry Bay. But the cards will turn, and
we'll have a good hand: the trump shall stand on the board we play at....
Let ye have courage. It is a fine story I have. Ye shall gain the day in
every quarter from the Sassanach. Strike ye the board, and the cards
will be coming to you. Drink out of hand now a health to Raftery: it is
he would put success for you on the Cuis da ple.'
This is part of another song:--
'I have a hope in Christ that a gap will be opened again for us.... The
day is not far off, the Gall will be stretched without anyone to cry after
them; but with us there will be a bonfire lighted up on high.... The
music of the world entirely, and Orpheus playing along with it. I'd
sooner than all that, the Sassanach to be cut down.'
But with all this, he had plenty of common sense, and an old man at
Ballylee tells me:--'One time there were a sort of
nightwalkers--Moonlighters as we'd call them now, Ribbonmen they
were then--making some plan against the Government; and they asked
Raftery to come to their meeting. And he went; but what he said was
this, in a verse, that they should look at the English Government, and
think of all the soldiers it had, and all the police--no, there were no
police in those days, but gaugers and such like--and they should think
how full up England was of guns and arms, so that it could put down
Buonaparty; and that it had conquered Spain, and took Gibraltar from it;
and the same in America, fighting for twenty-one years. And he asked
them what they had to fight with against all those guns and
arms?--nothing but a stump of a stick that they might cut down below

in the wood. So he bid them give up their nightwalking, and come out
and agitate in the daylight.'
I have been told--but I do not know if it is true--that he was once sent to
Galway Gaol for three months for a song he made against the
Protestant Church, 'saying it was like a wall slipping, where it wasn't
built