⸺ BITS OF BLARNEY. (N.Y.: Redfield). [1854]. (N.Y.: Alden). 1884.
“A series of Irish stories and legends collected from the peasantry,” familiar to the Author in youth (see pref.). It is a volume of miscellanies. Includes three stories of Blarney Castle told in serio-comic manner by a schoolmaster; some local legends of Finn McCool, &c.; eccentric characters (the bard O’Kelly, Father Prout, Irish dancing masters, Charley Crofts, Buck English); Irish publicists; sketches of Grattan and O’Connell (the former enthusiastic, the latter not wholly favourable—O’C. “the greatest professor of Blarney these latter days have seen or heard”). He speaks of O’C. from personal knowledge. On the whole thoroughly nationalist in tone. The Author, b. in Co. Limerick, 1809, educated Cork and Fermoy, was a journalist in London, afterwards in New York, and wrote or edited many valuable works, historical and biographical. D. 1880.
M’KEON, J. F.
⸺ ORMOND IDYLLS. Pp. 144. (Nutt). 1s. Paper. 1901.
Scene: Co. Kilkenny. Eight little sketches of peasant life, pathetic and sad. In one a glimpse is given with knowledge and sympathy of the work of a country priest.
M’LENNAN, William.
⸺ SPANISH JOHN. Pp. 270. (Harper). 6s. Eighteen v. g. Illustr. by F. de Myrbach. 1898.
Adventures of Col. John McDonnell from the Highlands, when a lieutenant in the regiment Irlandia, in the service of the K. of Spain, operating in Italy (1744-6). At the Scots College in Rome, whither he had been sent to be made a priest, he had met a young student, a Mr. O’Rourke. This latter, now a chaplain in the Irish Brigade, saves McD.’s life on the field of Villetri. Subsequently the two are sent by the Duke of York to Scotland on a mission to Prince Charlie. They find that all is lost. Characters admirably drawn, notably the humorous, warm-hearted, heroic Father O’Rourke.
“MACLEOD, Fiona”; William Sharp. B. Paisley, 1856. Ed. Glasgow Univ. Spent his boyhood in the West Highlands and Islands and became imbued with love for things Celtic. Even as late as 1899 it was positively stated that, in spite of conjectures to the contrary, William Sharp and Fiona MacLeod were not the same person, and Mrs. Hinkson says in her Twenty-five Years’ Reminiscences that she is not yet convinced that they were.