County Mayo

The gentle maunderings of Anthony Raftery one of the last of the
folk poets, are as close as genuine poetry has ever approached to
doggerel. The magnificent reply to someone who asked who the blind
man playing the fiddle was is literature.

  	I am Raftery the poet,
	    Full of hope and love,
	  With sightless eyes
	    And undistracted calm.

	  Going west on my journey
	    By the light of my heart,
		  Weak and tired V
	    To the end of my road.

	Look at me now!
	  My face to the wall,
	Playing music
	  To empty pockets.

Not, just the same, the sort of literature Raftery wrote.

Now with the springtime the days will grow longer,
  And after St. Bride’s Day my sail I’ll let go;
I put my mind to it and I never will linger
  Till I find myself back in the County Mayo.
It is in Claremorris I’ll stop the first evening;
  At Balla beneath it I’ll first take the floor;
I’ll go to Kiltimagh and have a month’s peace there,
  And that’s not two miles from Ballinamore.

I give you my word that the heart in me rises
  As when the wind rises and all the mists go,

Thinking of Carra and Gallen beneath it,
  Scahaveela and all the wide plains of Mayo;
Killeadan’s the village where everything pleases,
  Of berries and all sorts of fruit there’s no lack,
And if I could but stand in the heart of my people
  Old age would drop from me and youth would come back.


          Anthony Raftery


Source: O'Connor, Frank (tr); Kings, Lords, & Commons: An
Anthology from the Irish; 1962; London; Macmillan & Co; p.132