loft; and he told the people of the house his time was come, and bid
them make a coffin for him with the plank--and he was dead before
morning.' And another story says he died alone in an empty house, and
that flames were seen about the house all night; and 'the flames were
the angels waking him.' But many told me he had died in the house of a
man near Craughwell; and one autumn day I went there to look for it, and
the first person I asked was able to tell me that the house where
Raftery had died was the other side of Craughwell, a mile and a half
away. It was a warm, hazy day; and as I walked along the flat, deserted
road that Raftery had often walked, I could see few landmarks--only a
few more grey rocks, or a few more stunted hazel bushes in one
stone-walled field than in another. At last I came to a thatched
cottage; and when I saw an old man sitting outside it, with hat and coat
of the old fashion, I felt sure it was he who had been with Raftery at
the last. He was ready to talk about him, and told me how he had come
there to die. 'I was a young chap at that time. It must have been in
the year 1835, for my father died in '36, and I think it was a year
before him that Raftery died. What did he die of? Of weakness. He had
been bet up in Galway with some fit of sickness he had; and then he came
to gather a little money about the country, and when he got here he was
bet up again. He wasn't an old man--only about seventy years. He was in
the bed for about a fortnight. When he got bad, my father said it was
best get a priest for him; but the parish priest was away. But we saw
Father Nagle passing the road, and I went out and brought him in, and he
gave him absolution, and anointed him. He had no pain; only his feet
were cold, and the boys used to be warming a stone in the fire and
putting it to them in the bed. My mother wanted to send to Galway, where
his wife and his daughter and his son were stopping, so that they would
come and care him; but he wouldn't have them. Someway he didn't think
they treated him well.'