⸺ LEGENDS AND STORIES OF IRELAND. Two Vols. Pp. xix. + 240, and xvi + 274. (Constable). 3s. 6d. each. [1832 and 1834; many editions since]. 1899. (N.Y.: Sadlier). 1.50.
Introductions by the Author and by the editor, D. J. O’Donoghue. A miscellany consisting chiefly of humorous stories with regular plots. It contains also some old legends told in comic vein, yarns told by guides and boatmen, and several serious stories. There is nothing to offend Catholic feeling. There is a most sympathetic sketch of a priest and a story about the secret of the confessional that any Catholic might have written. The peasantry are seen only from outside, though the author mixed much among them. They are not caricatured, though chiefly comic types are selected. There is plenty of brogue, faithfully rendered on the whole. The first volume contains a humorous essay on Street Ballads, with specimens. Lover is at his best in uproariously laughable stories such us “The Gridiron” and “Paddy the Sport.”
⸺ FURTHER STORIES OF IRELAND. Pp. 220. (Constable). 3s. 6d. 1899. Critical and biographical introduction (pp. xxviii.) by D. J. O’Donoghue.
Chiefly very short, humorous sketches. Some are stories written around various national proverbs.
⸺ IRISH HEIRS: A Novel. Pp. 173. (N.Y.: Dick & Fitzgerald). Illustr. 187-.
Mentioned in catal. of N. Y. Library. Treasure Trove bore on original title-page the announcement that it was “the first of a series of accounts of Irish Heirs.”
LOVER and CROKER.
⸺ LEGENDS AND TALES OF IRELAND. Pp. 436. (Simpkin, Marshall, &c.). n.d. Now in print.
Contains:—Lover’s Legends and Tales of Ireland (twenty-four in all), and Croker’s Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland. “Croker and Lover,” says W. B. Yeats, “full of the ideas of harum-scarum Irish gentility, saw everything humourized. The impulse of the Irish literature of their time came from a class that did not—mainly for political reasons—take the people seriously, and imagined the country as a humorist’s Arcadia; its passion, its gloom, its tragedy they knew nothing of. What they did was not wholly false; they merely magnified an irresponsible type, found oftenest among boatmen, carmen, and gentlemen’s servants, into the type of a whole nation, and created the Stage-Irishman.”—(Introd. to Fairy and Folk-tales of the Irish Peasantry).