Author Róísín O Donnell’s new travel book Home Place, Heart Place brings the reader on a journey around Ireland, visiting well-known and less-renowned areas, accompanied by a local from each place. In this extract, she’s in  Craughwell musing on the life and work of wandering poet, Raftery, and Lady Gregory’s role in ensuring his legacy was passed on.

We want to visit Reilig na bhFilí (graveyard of the poets), in Killeeneen, where the local and celebrated poet Anthony Raftery is buried. We drive north-east from Kinvara towards Clarenbridge, by frosted grass and flooded fields. Finally, we find someone who knows Killeeneen.

‘You’ve gone too far,’ she tells us.

We turn back. This small cemetery is niched into a spot so small that it’s no wonder we drove past it. The poet Raftery lies here alongside his fellow poet and arch rival, Patsy Callanan, a local poet.

I expect to find the little gate padlocked and it stirs a thrill in me to push it open. This symbol of welcome revives a memory of a time when poets had the freedom of the unlocked doors around these parts. Raftery, the blind poet-musician was made welcome in the homes of the strong farmers around Gort and Kiltartan when he trudged around this area.

When I first was introduced to Raftery I used to wear my hair in braids and would hitch up my schoolbag like the children I saw getting off the bus. It all seems like the beginning of time now but I can still recite some of Raftery’s Cill Aodáin:

Anois teacht an Earraigh beidh an lá ag dul chun síneadh,

Is tar éis na Féile Bríde ardófaidh mé mo sheol,

Ó chuir mé i mo cheann é, ní stopfaidh mé choíche,

Go seasfaidh mé síos i lár Chontae Mhaigh Eó.

Now comes the spring/the day will be lengthening

and after Saint Brigit’s day

I will raise my sail.

Since I got it into my head I won’t stop

Until I stand in County Mayo

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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