at a shebeen house that used to be down there in Clonerle. He was
playing the fiddle, and there used to be two couples at a time dancing;
and they would put two halfpence in the plate, and Raftery would rattle
them and say: "It's good for the two sorts to be together," and there
would be great laughing.' And it is also said 'there was a welcome
before him in every house he'd come to; and wherever he went, they'd
think the time too short he would be with them.' There is a story I
often hear told about the marriage near Cappaghtagle of a poor servant
boy and girl, 'that was only a marriage and not a wedding, till Raftery
chanced to come in; and he made it one. There wasn't a bit but bread and
herrings in the house; but he made a great song about the grand feast
they had, and he put every sort of thing into the song--all the beef
that was in Ireland; and went to the Claddagh, and didn't leave a fish
in the sea. And there was no one at all at it; but he brought all the
_bacach_ and poor men in Ireland, and gave them a pound each. He went to
bed after, without them giving him a drop to drink; but he didn't mind
that when they hadn't got it to give.'

The wandering, unrestrained life was probably to his mind; and I do not
think there is a word of discontent or complaint in any of his verses,
though he was always poor, and must often have known hardship. In the
'Talk with the Bush,' he describes in his whimsical, exaggerated way, a
wetting, which must have been one of very many.

'It chanced that I was travelling and the rain was heavy; I stepped
aside, and not without reason, till I'd get a wall or a bush that
would shelter me.

'I didn't meet at the side of a gap only an old, withered,
miserable bush by the side of the wall, and it bent with the west