d the boys used to be warming a stone in the fire and
putting it to them in the bed. My mother wanted to send to Galway, where
his wife and his daughter and his son were stopping, so that they would
come and care him; but he wouldn't have them. Someway he didn't think
they treated him well.'
I had been told that the priest had refused him absolution when he was
dying, until he forgave some enemy; and that he had said afterwards, 'If
I forgave him with my mouth, I didn't with my heart'; but this was not
true. 'Father Nagle made no delay in anointing him; but there was a
carpenter down the road there he said too much to, and annoyed him one
time; and the carpenter had a touch of the poet too, and was a great
singer, and he came out and beat him, and broke his fiddle; and I
remember when he was dying, the priest bringing in the carpenter, and
making them forgive one another, and shake hands; and the carpenter
said: "If two brothers were to have a falling out, they'd forgive one
another--and why wouldn't we?" He was buried in Killeenan; it wasn't a
very big funeral, but all the people of the village came to it. He used
often to come and stop with us.... It was of a Christmas Eve he died:
and he had always said that, if God had a hand in it, it was of a
Christmas Day he'd die.'
I went to Killeenan to look for his grave. There is nothing to mark it;
but two old men who had been at his funeral pointed it out to me. There
is a ruined church in the graveyard, which is crowded; 'there are people
killing one another now to get a place in it.' I was asked into a house
close by; and its owner said with almost a touch of jealousy: 'I think
it was coming in here Raftery was the time he died; but he got bet up,
and turned in at the house below. It was of a Christmas Eve he died, and
that shows he was blessed; there's a blessing on them that die at
Christmas. It was at night he was buried, for Christmas Day no work
could be done, but my father and a few others made a little gathering to
pay for a coffin, and it was made by a man in the village on St.
Stephen's Day; and then he was brought here, and the people from the
villages followed him, for they all had a wish for Raftery. But night
was coming on when they got here; and in digging the grave there was a
big stone in it, and the boys thought they would put him in a barn and
take the night out of him. But my mother--the Lord have mercy on
her--had a great veneration for Raftery; and
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