s that he has made in Galway as well as in Mayo, a
weaver, a carpenter, a priest at Kilcolgan who is 'the good Christian,
the clean wheat of the Gael, the generous messenger, the standing tree
of the clergy.' Some of his eulogies both on persons and places are
somewhat spoiled by grotesque exaggeration. Even Cilleaden has not only
all sorts of native fishes, 'as plenty as turf,' and all sorts of native
trees, but is endowed with 'tortoises,' with 'logwood and mahogany.' His
country weaver must not only have frieze and linen in his loom, but
satin and cambric. A carpenter near Ardrahan, Seaghan Conroy, is praised
with more simplicity for his 'quick, lucky work,' and for the pleasure
he takes in it. 'I never met his master; the trade was in his nature';
and he gives a long list of all the things he could make: doors and all
that would be wanted for a big house'; mills and ploughs and
spinning-wheels 'nicely finished with a clean chisel'; 'all sorts of
things for the living, and a coffin for the dead. And with all this 'he
cares little for money, but to spend, as he earns, decently. And if he
was up for nine nights, you wouldn't see the sign of a drop on him.'

Another of his more simple poems is what Spenser would call an 'elegie
or friend's passion' on a player on fiddle or pipes, Thomas O'Daly, that
gives him a touch of kinship with the poets who have mourned their
Astrophel, their Lycidas, their Adonais, their Thyrsis. This is how I
have been helped to put it into English by a young working farmer,
sitting by a turf fire one evening, when his day in the fields was
over:--

'It was Thomas O'Daly that roused up young people and scattered
them, and since death played on him, may God give him grace. The
country is all sorrowful, always talking, since their man of sport
died that would win the goal in all parts with his music.

'The swans on the water are nine times blacker than a blackberry
since the man died from us that had pleasantness on the top of his
fingers. His two grey eyes were like the dew of the morning that
lies on the grass. And since he was laid in the grave, the cold is
getting the upper hand.

'If you travel the five provinces, you would not find his equal for
countenance or behaviour, for his equal never walked on land or
grass. High King of Nature, you who have all powers in yourself, he
that wasn't narrow-hearted, give him shelter in he