Poets and Dreamers | Page 6

solid.'
III.
When at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the poets O'Lewy
and O'Clery and their supporters held a 'Contention,' the results were
written down in a volume containing 7,000 lines. I think the greater
number of the 'Contentions' between Raftery and his fellow-poets were
never written down; but the country people still discuss them with all
the eagerness of partisans. On old man from Athenry says: 'Raftery
travelled Ireland, challenging all the poets of that time. There were
hundreds of country poets in those days, and a welcome for them all.
Raftery had enough to do to beat them, but he was the best; his poetry
was the gift of God, and his poems are sung as far away as Limerick
and Dublin.' There is a story of his knocking at a door one night, when
he was looking for the house of a poet he had heard of and wanted to
challenge, and saying: 'I am a poet seeing shelter'; and a girl answered
him from within with a verse, saying he must be a blind man to be out
so late looking for shelter; and then he knew it was the house he was
looking for. And it is said that the daughter of another poet was on his
way to see in Clare, gave him such a sharp answer when he met her
outside the house that he turned back and would not contend with her
father at all. And he is said to have 'hunted another poet Daly--hunted
him all through Ireland.' But these other poets do not seem to have left
a great name. There was a Connemara poet, Sweeny, that was put under
a curse by the priests 'because he used to make so much fun at the
wakes'; and in one of Raftery's poems he thanks Sweeny for having
come to his help in some dispute; and there was 'one John Burke, who
was a good poet, too; he and Raftery would meet at fairs and weddings,
and be trying which would put down the other.' I am told of an 'attack'
they made on each other one day on the fair green of Cappaghtagle.

Burke said: 'After all your walk of land and callows, Burke is before
you at the fair of Cappagh.' And Raftery said: 'You are not Burke but a
breed of scatties, That's all over the country gathering praties; When
I'm at the table filling glasses, You are in the corner with your feet in
the ashes.' Then Burke said: 'Raftery a poet, and he with bracked
(speckled) shins, And he playing music with catgut; Raftery the poet,
and his back to the wall, And he playing music for empty pockets.
There's no one cares for his music at all, but he does be always craving
money.' For he was sometimes accused of love of money; 'he wouldn't
play for empty pockets, and he'd make the plate rattle at the end of a
dance.'
But his most serious rival in his own part of the country was Callinan,
the well-to-do farmer who lived near Craughwell, of whom the old
women in the workhouse spoke. I have heard some of Callinan's poems
and songs; but I do not find the imaginative power of Raftery in them.
He seems, in distinction to him, to be the poet of the domestic
affections, of the settled classes. His songs have melody and good
sentiments; and they are often accompanied by a rhymed English
version, made by his brother, a lesser poet. The favourite among them
is a song on a wooden beetle, lost by his wife when washing clothes at
the river. She is made to lament the loss of 'so good a servant' in a sort
of allegory; and then its journey is traced from the river to the sea. An
old man gives me a little memory of him: 'I saw Callinan one time
when we went to dig potatoes for him at his own place, the other side
of Craughwell. We went into the house for dinner; and we were in a
hurry, and he was sitting by the hearth talking all the time; for he was a
great talker, so that the veins of his neck swelled up. And he was telling
us about the song he made about his own Missus when she was out
washing by the river. He was up to eighty years at that time.' And there
are accounts of the making of some of his songs that show his kindly
disposition and amiability. 'One time there was a baby in the house, and
there was a dance going on near, and Mrs. Callinan was a young
woman; and she said she'd go for a bit to the dance-house; and she bid
Callinan rock