By the Author of Rosa, the Work Girl. Helen Wilson, whose mother was Irish, inherits an estate in Kerry. After years of residence in India and then in England, she comes to live in Ireland, grows to love the people, and spends what is left of her failing life in teaching the natives the New Testament in Irish. The interest of the book lies in its picture of and apology for, the attempt made (chiefly by “The Irish Society”) in the first half of the 19th century to convert the Irish to Protestantism through the medium of the Irish language. The witness it gives to the bitterly anti-Irish feeling prevailing in England at the time is interesting. The peasantry is represented as debased and priest-ridden, but their condition is ascribed in part to English hostility and to absenteeism.
PETREL, Fulmar.
⸺ GRANIA WAILE. Pp. 285, large print. (Unwin). Frontispiece and map. 1895.
A fanciful story written around the early life and after-career of the O’Malley Sea-queen. Her robbing, when only a young girl, of the eagle’s nest, her desperate sea-fights, and her many other adventures make pleasant reading. The atmosphere of the period is well brought out. But few of the incidents narrated are historical facts.
PICKERING, Edgar.
⸺ TRUE TO THE WATCHWORD. Pp. 299. (Warne). 3s. 6d. Eight illustr. 1902.
A spirited account of the siege of Derry from the point of view of the besieged. Full of hairbreadth escapes and of desperate encounters with the Irishry, who are spoken of throughout as ferocious savages. Apart from this last point there is no noteworthy falsification of history. For boys.
POLLARD, Eliza F.
⸺ THE KING’S SIGNET. (Blackie, and U.S.A.: Scribner).