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 and Latin, French, and the three sorts of English, and I will speak to you sweetly in Irish, the language that you found your verses in. I am death that has hidden hundreds: Hannibal, Pompey, Julius Caesar; I was in the way with Queen Helen. I made Hector fall, that conquered the Greeks, and Conchubar, that was king of Ireland; Cuchulain and Goll, Oscar and Diarmuid, and Oisin, that lived after the Fenians; and the children of Usnach that brought away Deirdre from Conchubar; at a touch from me they all fell.” But Raftery answers: “O high Prince, without height, without followers, without dwelling, without strength, without hands, without force, without state: all in the world wouldn’t make me believe it, that you’d be able to put down the half of them."’
But death speaks solemnly to him then, and warns him that:—
’Life is not a thing that you get a lease of; there will be stones and a sod over you yet. Your ears that were so quick to hear everything will be closed, deaf, without sound, without hearing; your tongue that was so sweet to make verses will be without a word in the same way.... Whatever store of money or wealth you have, and the great coat up about your ears, death will snap you away from the middle of it.’
And the poem ends at last with the story of the Passion and a prayer for mercy.