their strength.

'Deformity and lameness and corruption upon you; flight and defeat
and the hatred of your kin. That shivering fever may stretch you
nine times, and that particularly at the time of Easter ('because,'
it is explained, 'it was at Easter time our Lord was put to death,
and it is the time He can best hear the curses of the poor').

'May a sore heart and cold flesh be upon you; may there be no
marrow or moisture in your bones. That clay may never be put over
your coffin-boards, but wind and a sharp blast on you from the
north.

'Baldness and nakedness come upon you, judgment from above, and the
curses of the crowd. May dragon's gall and poison mixed through it
be your best drink at the hour of death.'

Sometimes he left a scathing verse on a place where he was not well
treated, as: 'Oranmore without merriment. A little town in scarce
fields--a broken little town, with its back to the water, and with women
that have no understanding.'

He did not spare persons any more than places, especially if they were
well-to-do, for his gentleness was for the poor. An old woman who
remembers him says: 'He didn't care much about big houses. Just if they
were people he liked, and that he was friendly with them, he would be
kind enough to go in and see them.' A Mr. Burke, who met him going from
his house, asked how he had fared, and he said in a scornful verse:--

'Potatoes that were softer than the fog,