ay 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, he would be
kind enough to go in and see them.' A Mr. Burke, who met him going from
his house, asked how he had fared, and he said in a scornful verse:--

'Potatoes that were softer than the fog,
And with neither butter nor meat,
And milk that was sourer than apples in harvest--
That's what Raftery got from Burke of Kilfinn.'

'And Mr. Burke begged him to rhyme no more, but to come back, and he
would be well taken care of.' I am told of another house he abused and
that is now deserted: 'Frenchforth of the soot, that was wedded to the
smoke, that is all that remains of the property.... There were some of
them on mules, and some of them unruly, and the biggest of them were
smaller than asses, and the master cracking them with a stick;' 'but he
went no further than that, because he remembered the good treatment used
to be there in former times, and he wouldn't have said that much if it
wasn't for the servants that vexed him.' A satire, that is remembered
in Aran, was made with the better intention of helping a barefooted
girl, who had been kept waiting a long time for a pair of shoes she had
ordered. Raftery came, and sat down before the shoemaker's house, and
began:--

'A young little girl without sense, the ground tearing her feet, is
not satisfied yet by the lying Peter Glynn. Peter Glynn, the liar,
in his little house by the side of the road, is without the
strength in his arms to slip together a pair of brogues.'

'And, before he had finished the lines, Peter Glynn ran out and called