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