These books of Fiona Macleod’s are, for the most part, shadowy, elusive dream-poems in prose, wrought into a form of beauty from fragments of old Gaelic tales heard in the Western isles (where the Author lived for years) from fishermen and crofters. They are full of the magic of words subtly woven, of vague mystery, and of nature—wind and sea and sky. He strives to infuse into his stories the sadder and more mystic aspects of the Gaelic spirit, as he conceives it. “I have not striven to depict the blither Irish Celt.” But many of his stories are simply Irish legends, e.g., The Harping of Cravetheen. The Author thus describes his work: “In certain sections are tales of the old Gaelic and Celtic Scandinavian life and mythology; in others there is a blending of paganism and Christianity; in others again are tales of the dreaming imagination having their base in old mythology, or in a kindred mythopæic source.... Many of these tales are of the grey wandering wave of the West, and through each goes the wind of the Gaelic spirit which turns to the dim enchantment of dreams.” On the other hand, some of these stories deal with life in modern Gaelic Scotland, e.g., The Mountain Lovers, which, however poetically told, is after all a tale of seduction. The Winged Destiny, amid much matter of a different nature, contains several tales of Gaelic inspiration.
MACLEOD and THOMSON.
⸺ SONGS AND TALES OF ST. COLUMBA AND HIS AGE. By Fiona Macleod and J. Arthur Thomson. Third edition. Large paper 4to. (Edinb.: Patrick Geddes). 6d. nett.
M’MAHON, Ella. Dau. of late Rev. J. H. MacMahon, Chaplain to the Lord-Lieutenant. Ed.: home. Has written much for various magazines and periodicals, and particularly on historical and archæological subjects. Has publ. about seventeen novels. Now resides in Chelsea.—(Who’s Who).
⸺ FANCY O’BRIEN. (Chapman & Hall). 6s. 1909.
A tragedy of city life centering in the betrayal and desertion of Bridgie Doyle by Fancy O’Brien. Full of human interest, careful and skilful study of character and motive. Catholic in sympathy. “In its minor details the book is true to life, photographic in its realism.” The story is of high dramatic and literary excellence. In the account of the Easter Monday excursion to Bray “the story of Bridgie’s undoing is told with a rare combination of poetry, force, and restraint.”—(N.I.R., Aug., 1909).
⸺ THE JOB. Pp. 383. (Nisbet). 6s. 1914.
Sir Thady, a Cromwellian-Irish baronet, grows interested in his Irish surroundings on his estate of Ballymaclashin. He ceases to haunt the Bath Club, Piccadilly, and takes to starting carpet factories (The Job). Many of the incidents are furnished by the difficulties that beset the task owing to the amateurish innocence of the baronet and the stupidity of his local helpers. And besides there are the love affairs of Sir Thady and the English Miss Devereux. The point of view is Anglo-Irish, the “mere” Irish being regarded de haut en bas as rather impossible, thriftless, poor people, in short, as a problem to be dealt with philanthropically. The style is easy and pleasant.
MACMANUS, Miss L. Holds a distinct place among Irish authors of to-day as being one of the very few writers of Irish historical fiction who write from a thoroughly national standpoint. Her books are straightforward, stirring tales, enthusiastically Irish, free from tedious disquisitions, but based on considerable historical research. She is a worker in the ranks of the Gaelic League, and in her Co. Mayo (Kiltimagh) home does much for the cause of Irish Ireland. She is interested in folklore, and some of the tales she has collected have recently been publ. in the Folklore Journal. Some of her stories in the Dublin weeklies deal in the weird and the mysterious. The following have been publ. by The Educational Co. of Ireland as penny pamphlets:—In the High King’s Camp, A Battle Champion, Felim the Harper, The Prince of Breffny’s Son, How Enda went to the Iceland, The Leathern Cloaks. She has publ. two serials in Sinn Fein: The Professor in Erin and One Generation Passeth.
⸺ THE SILK OF THE KINE. Pp. 282. (Fisher Unwin). 3s. 6d. (N.Y.: Harper). 1.00. 1896.