The main theme is the seduction of a young peasant girl by the son of the landlord, and the nemesis that overtook the seducer after many years. The story is told with exceptional power and pathos. There is no prurient description, unless one half-page might be objected to on this score. The peasants are natural and life-like, but there is something strangely repellant in the pictures of the upper classes. There are incidents bringing out the darker aspects of the land-war. There is no anti-religious bias.
⸺ THE WOOING OF SHEILA. (Methuen). 6s. [1901]. Second ed., 1908. (N.Y.: Holt). 1.50.
A gentleman, from unnatural motives, deliberately brings up his son as a common labourer. The boy falls in love with and marries a peasant girl, whom he had saved from the pursuit of a rascally young squire. On her marriage morning she learns that her husband has killed her unworthy lover. She at once leaves her husband, but a priest induces her to return, and the crime is hushed up in a rather improbable manner. As in the Author’s other books, there is a subtle charm of style, delicate analysis of character, and fair knowledge of peasant life.
⸺ THE PRINCE OF LISNOVER. (Methuen). 1904.
Ireland in the early ’sixties. Has same qualities as Mary Dominic. Devotion of the people to the old and dispossessed “lord of the soil” is touchingly brought out. A pretty girl-and-boy love story runs through the whole.
⸺ THE CHARMING OF ESTERCEL. Pp. 318. (Dent). 6s. 1913.
A love story of Ireland in the days of O’Neill and Essex. The main interest lies in the story of how Estercel is brought to love his cousin Sabia, and in the adventures of the former, an O’Neill and the envoy of the great Hugh, in Dublin and in Ulster. But the historical background is well painted and the historical personages carefully studied. The hero’s wonderful horse, Tamburlaine, is a strange and original “character” in the piece, and there is a splendid description of how he carried his master from Dublin home to the North. The Author writes with sympathy for Ireland. The charm of the style is enhanced by her sympathy with wild nature and delicate perception of its sights and sounds.
RHYS, Rt. Hon. Sir John, M.A., D.Litt. B. Cardiganshire, 1840. Ed. Bangor and Oxford. Also at the Sorbonne, College de France, Heidelberg, Leipsic, and Göttingen. Prof. of Celtic at Oxford since 1877. Member of innumerable learned societies and royal commissions. He has read many valuable papers on Celtic subjects before the R.I.A. Publ. a long series of works on Celtic subjects, e.g., Celtic Heathendom, 1886.
⸺ CELTIC FOLK-LORE, Welsh and Manx. Two Vols. Pp. xlvi. + 718. (Oxford: Clarendon Press). 10s. 1901.
Stories gathered partly by letter, partly viva voce, classified and critically discussed. The group of ideas, he concludes, connected with the fairies is drawn partly from history and fact, partly from the world of imagination and myth, the former part representing vague traditions of earlier races. Many subsidiary questions are raised, e.g., magic, the origin of druidism, certain aspects of the Arthurian legends, &c. Ch. x. deals with Difficulties of the Folk-lorist; Ch. xi. with Folk-lore Philosophy; Ch. xii. with Race in Folk-lore and Myth. Throughout constant references are made to and frequent parallels drawn with Irish folk-lore, e.g., the Cuchulainn cycle.