’She is the girl that has been taught the nicest of all whose eyes
     still open to the sun; and if the estate of Lord Lucan belonged to
     me, on the strength of my cause this jewel would be mine.

     ’Her slender lime-white shape, her face like flowers, her neck, her
     cheek, and her amber hair; Virgil, Cicero, and Homer could tell of
     nothing like her; she is like the dew in the time of harvest.

     ’If you could see this plant moving or dancing, you could not but
     love the flower of the branch.  If I cannot get a hundred words with
     Mairin Stanton, I do not think my life will last long.

     ’She said “Good morrow” early and pleasantly; she drank my health,
     and gave me a stool, and it not in the corner.  At the time that I
     am ready to go on my way I will stay talking and talking with her.’

The ‘pearl that was at Ballylee’ was poor Mary Hynes, of whom I have already spoken.  His song on her is very popular; ’a great song, so that her name is sung through the three parishes.’  She must have been beautiful, for many who knew her still speak of her beauty, of her long, shining hair, and the ‘little blushes in her cheeks.’  An old woman says:  ’I never can think of her but I’ll get a trembling, she was so nice; and if she was to begin talking, she’d keep you laughing till daybreak.’  But others say:  ‘It was the poet that made her so handsome’; or, ‘whatever she was, he made twice as much of it.’  I give one or two verses of the song:—­

     ’There was no part of Ireland I did not travel:  from the rivers to
     the tops of the mountains, to the edge of Lough Greine, whose mouth
     is hidden; but I saw no beauty but was behind hers.

     ’Her hair was shining, and her brows were shining too; her face was
     like herself, her mouth pleasant and sweet.  She is the pride, and I
     give her the branch.  She is the shining flower of Ballylee.’

Even many miles from Ballylee, if the posin glegeal—­the ’shining flower’—­is spoken of, it is always known that it is Mary Hynes who is meant.

Raftery is said to have spent the last seven years of his life praying and making religious songs, because death had told him in a vision that he had only seven years to live.  His own account of the vision was given me by the man at whose house he died.  ’I heard him telling my father one time, that he was sick in Galway, and there was a mug beside the bed, and in the night he heard a noise, and he thought it was the cat was on the table, and that she’d upset the mug; and he put his hand out, and what he felt was the bones and the thinness of death.  And his sight came to him, and he saw where his wrapper was hanging on the wall.  And death said he had come to bring him away, or else one of the neighbours that lived in such a house.  And after they had talked a while, he said he would give him a certain