There are some other verses made by him that have been less legendary in their effect.  The story is:—­’It was Anthony Daly, a carpenter, was hanged at Seefin.  It was the two Z’s got him put away.  He was brought before a judge in Galway, and accused of being a Captain of Whiteboys, and it was sworn against him that he fired at Mr. X. He was a one-eyed man; and he said:  “If I did, though I have but one eye, I would have hit him”—­for he was a very good shot; and he asked that some object should be put up, and he would show the judge that he would hit it, but he said nothing else.  Some were afraid he’d give up the names of the other Whiteboys; but he did not.  There was a gallows put up at Seefin; and he was brought there sitting on his coffin in a cart.  There were people all the way along the road, and they were calling on him to break through the crowd, and they’d save him; and some of the soldiers were Irish, and they called back that if he did they’d only fire their guns in the air; but he made no attempt, but went to the gallows quiet enough.  There was a man in Gort was telling me he saw it, planting potatoes he was at Seefin that day.  It was in the year 1820; and Raftery was there at the hanging, and he made a song about it.  The first verse of the song said:  “Wasn’t that the good tree, that wouldn’t let any branch that was on it fall to the ground?” He meant by that that he didn’t give up the names of the other Whiteboys.  And at the end he called down judgment from God on the two Z’s, and, if not on them, on their children.  And they that had land and farms in all parts, lost it after; and all they had vanished; and the most of their children died—­only two left, one a friar, and the other living in the town.’  And quite lately I have been told by another neighbour, in corroboration, that a girl of the Z family married into a family near his home the other day, and was coldly received; and when my neighbour asked one of the family why this was, he was told that ’those of her people that went so high ought to have gone higher’—­meaning that they themselves ought to have been on the gallows; and then he knew that Raftery’s curse was still having its effect.  And he had also heard that the grass had never grown again at Seefin.

This is a part of the song:—­

’The evening of Friday of the Crucifixion, the Gael was under the mercy of the Gall.  It was as heavy the same day as when the only Son of Mary was on the tree.  I have hope in the Son of God, my grief! and it is of no use for me; and it was Conall and his wife hung Daly, and may they be paid for it!

’But oh! young woman, while I live, I put death on the village where you will be; plague and death on it; and may the flood rise over it; that much is no sin at all, O bright God; and I pray with longing it may fall on the man that hung Daly; that left his people and his children crying.

’O stretch out your limbs!