started from there. He counted every step that he stepped out; and when
he got to the stile, he stopped straight before it.' And I was told also
there used to be a flagstone put beside the bog-holes to leap from, and
Raftery would leap as well as any man. He would count his steps back
from the flag, and take a run and alight on the other side.


VI.

His knowledge and his poetic gift are often supposed to have been given
to him by the invisible powers, who grow visible to those who have lost
their earthly sight. An old woman who had often danced to his music,
said:--'When he went to his rest at night, it's then he'd make the songs
in the turn of a hand, and you would wonder in the morning where he got
them.' And a man who 'was too much taken up with sport and hurling when
he was a boy to think much about him,' says: 'He got the gift. It's said
he was asked which would he choose, music or the talk. If he chose
music, he would have been the greatest musician in the world; but he
chose the talk, and so he was a great poet. Where could he have found
all the words he put in his songs if it wasn't for that?' An old woman,
who is more orthodox, says:--'I often used to see him when I was a
little child, in my father's house at Corker. He'd often come in there,
and here to Coole House he used to come as well. He couldn't see a
stim, and that is why he had such great knowledge. God gave it to him.
And his songs have gone all through the world; and he had a voice that
was like the wind.'

Legends are already growing up about his death. It has been said that
'he knew the very day his time would be up; and he went to Galway, and
brought a plank to the house he was stopping at, and he put it in the