to him to stop, and he set at work on the shoes then and there.' He even
ventured to poke a little satire at a priest sometimes. 'He went into
the chapel at Kilchreest one time, and there was some cabbage after
being stolen from a garden, and the priest was speaking about it.
Raftery was at the bottom of the chapel, and at last he called out in
verse:--"What a lot of talk about cabbage! If there was meat with it, it
would feed the whole parish!" The priest didn't mind, but afterwards he
came down, and said: "Where is the cabbage man?" and asked him to make
some more verses about it; but whether he did or not I don't know.' And
another time, I am told: 'A priest wanted to teach him the rite of lay
baptism; for there were scattered houses a priest might take a long time
getting to, away from the roads, and certain persons were authorized to
give the rite. So the priest put his hat in Raftery's hand, and told him
the words to say; but it is what he said: "I baptize you without either
foot or hand, without salt or tow, beer or drink. Your father was a ram
and your mother was a sheep, and your like never came to be baptized
before." He was put under a curse, too, one time by a priest, and he
made a song about him; but he said he put his frock out of the bargain,
and it was only the priest's own body he would speak about. And the
priest let him alone after that.' And an old basket-maker, who had told
me some of these things, said at the end: 'That is why the poets had to
be banished before in the time of St. Columcill. Sure no one could stand
the satire of them.'

II.

Irish history having been forbidden in schools, has been, to a great
extent, learned from Raftery's poems by the people of Mayo, where he was
born, and of Galway, where he spent his later years. It is hard to say
where history ends in them and religion and politics begin; for history,
religion, and politics grow on one stem in Ireland, an eternal trefoil.
'He was a great historian,' it is said; 'for every book he'd get hold
of, he'd get it read out to him.' And a neighbour tells me: 'He used to
stop with my uncle that was a hedge schoolmaster in those times in
Ballylee, and that was very fond of drink; and when he was drunk, he'd
take his clothes off, and run naked through the country. But at evening
he'd open the school; and the neighbours that would be working all day
would gather in to him, and he'd teach them through the night; and there
Raftery would