poet? The weaver whose words about Mary Hynes I have already given,
says, "His poetry was the gift of the Almighty, for there are three
things that are the gift of the Almighty--poetry and dancing and
principles. That is why in the old times an ignorant man coming down
from the hillside would be better behaved and have better learning than
a man with education you'd meet now, for they got it from God"; and a
man at Coole says, "When he put his finger to one part of his head,
everything would come to him as if it was written in a book"; and an
old pensioner at Kiltartan says, "He was standing under a bush one
time, and he talked to it, and it answered him back in Irish. Some say
it was the bush that spoke, but it must have been an enchanted voice in
it, and it gave him the knowledge of all the things of the world. The
bush withered up afterwards, and it is to be seen on the roadside now
between this and Rahasine." There is a poem of his about a bush, which
I have never seen, and it may have come out of the cauldron of fable in
this shape.

A friend of mine met a man once who had been with him when he died,
but the people say that he died alone, and one Maurteen Gillane told
Dr. Hyde that all night long a light was seen streaming up to heaven
from the roof of the house where he lay, and "that was the angels who
were with him"; and all night long there was a great light in the
hovel, "and that was the angels who were waking him. They gave that
honour to him because he was so good a poet, and sang such religious
songs." It may be that in a few years Fable, who changes mortalities to
immortalities in her cauldron, will have changed Mary Hynes and Raftery
to perfect symbols of the sorrow of beauty and of the magnificence and
penury of dreams.