Dedication in Irish and English. Thirty-four full-page pen and ink drawings, signed “Verbeek.” These latter are quaint and amusingly grotesque. The stories are folk-tales, told just as the peasantry tell them, without brogue, but with all the repetitions, humorous extravagances and naïveté of the folk-tale. They are just the thing for children, and are quite free from coarseness and vulgarity.
⸺ THE RED POACHER. (N.Y.: Funk & Wagnalls). 0.75. 1903.
⸺ A LAD OF THE O’FRIELS. Pp. 318. (Gill; Duffy). 2s., 2s. 6d., 3s. (N.Y.: Pratt). 2.00. [1903]. Third ed., 1906.
In this book one actually seems to have been living among the childlike and quaint yet deep-natured, true, and altogether lovable little circle of Knocknagar, and to have shared its joys and sorrows. Every character described stands out altogether distinct, old Toal a’Gallagher the sententious; his wife, Susie of the sharp tongue; their son, Toal the “Vagabone,” with his wild pranks; the grandiloquent “Masther,” and all the rest. Through it all runs the simple love story of Dinny O’Friel and Nuala Gildea, companions from childhood. The book is full of deep, but quiet and restrained, feeling. The description of the pilgrimage to Lough Derg has much beauty.
⸺ DOCTOR KILGANNON. (Gill). 1s. (Wrapper). Well illustr. 1907.
A string of loosely-connected after-dinner stories chiefly about comic duelling and electioneering. Told with pleasant drollery.
⸺ YOURSELF AND THE NEIGHBOURS. Pp. 304. (N.Y.: Devin Adair Co.). Five Illustr. by T. Fogarty. 1914.
A picture by one who has lived it of the life of the Donegal peasant—not their outward life merely, but their most intimate thoughts and beliefs, hopes and joys, their whole outlook on things. The Author is discerning and sympathetic in a high degree. “Yourself and Herself” gives a Donegal man’s life story from “the barefoot time” through love and marriage to “evening’s quiet end.” Some of the remaining stories show the Author’s humour at its best—the Homeric struggles of the “priest’s boy” with the New Curate and the Tartar of a postmistress, the “come home Yankee,” and so on.
M’NALLY, Mrs.[8]