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.'
I had been told that the priest had refused him absolution when he was
dying, until he forgave some enemy; and that he had said afterwards, 'If
I forgave him with my mouth, I didn't with my heart'; but this was not
true. 'Father Nagle made no delay in anointing him; but there was a
carpenter down the road there he said too much to, and annoyed him one
time; and the carpenter had a touch of the poet too, and was a great
singer, and he came out and beat him, and broke his fiddle; and I
remember when he was dying, the priest bringing in the carpenter, and
making them forgive one another, and shake hands; and the carpenter
said: "If two brothers were to have a falling out, they'd forgive one
another--and why wouldn't we?" He was buried in Killeenan; it wasn't a
very big funeral, but all the people of the village came to it. He used
often to come and stop with us.... It was of a Christmas Eve he died:
and he had always said that, if God had a hand in it, it was of a
Christmas Day he'd die.'
I went to Killeenan to look for his grave. There is nothing to mark it;
but two old men who had been at his funeral pointed it out to me. There
is a ruined church in the graveyard, which is crowded; 'there are people
killing one another now to get a place in it.
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