MACMANUS, Seumas. B. Mountcharles, Co. Donegal, 1870. Son of a peasant farmer. Was for some years a National School teacher, but subsequently turned entirely to journalism. Has written for most of the Irish papers and magazines and for many English and American periodicals. Is well known in the States, where he frequently goes on lecturing tours.
⸺ SHUILERS FROM HEATHY HILLS. Pp. 102. (Mountcharles: G. Kirke). 1893.
The Author’s earliest poems and three prose sketches:—“Micky Maguire” (the last of the hedge schoolmasters), “How you bathe at Bundoran,” and “A Trip with Phil M’Goldrick.”
⸺ THE LEADIN’ ROAD TO DONEGAL. Pp. 246. (Digby, Long). 3s. 6d. (N.Y.: Pratt). 2.00. [1896]. Second ed., 1908; others since.
Twelve short stories of the Donegal peasantry, full of very genuine, if somewhat broad, humour and drollery. They are not meant as pictures of peasant life. The dialect is exaggerated for humorous purposes, and at times the fun goes perilously near “Stage-Irishism.” But they are never coarse or vulgar.
⸺ ’TWAS IN DHROLL DONEGAL. (Gill). 1s. Third ed., 1897.
Eight tales dealing with the humorous side of the home-life of Donegal peasants. A few, however, are folk-tales of the Jack the Giant-killer type. Told with verve and piquancy and with unflagging humour, but the skill in story-telling is naturally not as developed in this as in the Author’s later work, drawing a good deal upon humorous padding to aid the intrinsic humour of the incidents.
⸺ THE BEND OF THE ROAD. (Gill, Duffy). 2s., 3s. (N.Y.: Pratt). 1.75. [1897].
This is a sequel to A Lad of the O’Friels,[7] but consists of detached sketches, and is not told in the first person. Most of the sketches are humorous, notably “Father Dan and Fiddlers Four”; but there is pathos, too, as in “The Widow’s Mary,” a scene at a wake before an eviction. The Introduction is an admirable summing up of the peculiarities, emotions, and vicissitudes of life in an out-of-the-way Donegal countryside.