ave spent the last seven years of his life praying
and making religious songs, because death had told him in a vision that
he had only seven years to live. His own account of the vision was given
me by the man at whose house he died. 'I heard him telling my father one
time, that he was sick in Galway, and there was a mug beside the bed,
and in the night he heard a noise, and he thought it was the cat was on
the table, and that she'd upset the mug; and he put his hand out, and
what he felt was the bones and the thinness of death. And his sight came
to him, and he saw where his wrapper was hanging on the wall. And death
said he had come to bring him away, or else one of the neighbours that
lived in such a house. And after they had talked a while, he said he
would give him a certain time before he'd come for him again, and he
went away. And in the morning when his wife came in, he asked where did
she hang his wrapper the night before, and she told him it was in such a
place, and that was the very place he saw it, so he knew he had had his
sight. And then he sent to the house that had been spoken of to know how
was the man of it, and word came back that he was dead. I remember when
he was dying, a friend of his, one Cooney, came in to see him, and said:
"Well, Raftery, the time is not up yet that death gave you to live." And
he said: "The Church and myself have it made out that it was not death
that was there, but the devil that came to tempt me."

His description of death in his poem on the 'Vision,' is vivid and
unconventional:--

'I had a vision in my sleep last night, between sleeping and
waking, a figure standing beside me, thin, miserable, sad, and
sorrowful; the shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the
tears down his cheeks. His ribs were bending like the bottom of a
riddle; his nose thin, that it would go through a cambric needle;
his shoulders hard and sharp, that they would cut tobacco; his head
dark and bushy like the top of a hill; and there is nothing I can
liken his fingers to. His poor bones without any kind of covering;
a withered rod in his hand, and he looking in my face. It is not
worth my while to be talking about him; I questioned him in the
name of God.'

A long conversation follows; Raftery addresses him:--

'Whatever harbour you came from last night, move up to me and speak
if you can.' Death answers: "Put away Hebrew, Greek