⸺ ANCIENT LEGENDS OF IRELAND. Pp. 350. (Ward & Downey). 6s. 1888.
A collection of fairy stories, legends, descriptions of superstitious practices, medicals cures and charms, robber stories, notes on holy wells, &c., taken down from the peasantry, some in Gaelic, some in English. The legends, &c., are preceded by a learned essay on the origin and history of legend, and the book concludes with chapters on Irish art and ethnology and a lecture by Sir W. Wilde on the ancient races of Ireland. Contains a vast amount of matter useful to the folk-lorist, to the general reader, and even to the historian. The stories are rather pathetic and tender than humorous. Wrote also Ancient Cures, Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, Driftwood from Scandinavia, The American Irish, &c.
WILLIAMS, Charles. B. Coleraine, 1838. D. London, 1904. The celebrated war correspondent of the Daily Chronicle and Standard; first editor of Evening News, and founder of the Press Club. Wrote a Life of Sir Evelyn Wood.
⸺ JOHN THADDEUS MACKAY. Pp. 327. (Burleigh). (1889). 6s.
In this clever novel the Author draws upon his recollections of early days in Ulster. The hero, “a stickit minister,” goes out to India in company with a “Howley” father, so named after a famous Archbishop of Canterbury, and both learn charity and brotherly love and see the narrowness of their own views through mixing with the natives. Many real personages are introduced under thinly disguised cognomens, thus “Rev. Thomas Trifle” is the late Rev. Thomas Toye, of Belfast.
WILLS, William Gorman. B. Kilkenny, 1828. D. London, 1891. Poet, Painter, Dramatist, and Novelist. Ed. T.C.D. Son of Rev. James Wills, also a prolific writer. Wills is better known as a dramatist, having written no fewer than thirty-three plays, amongst the finest of them being Charles I., Olivia, and Faust. Amongst his other novels are Life’s Foreshadowings, which first appeared as a serial in Irish Metropolitan Magazine, 1857-8; The Wife’s Evidence, founded on an Irish tragedy, where a man named McLaughlin was hanged for a murder committed by his mother; Old Times, Notice to Quit, David Chantry, besides a long poem, Melchior.
⸺ THE LOVE THAT KILLS. Three Vols. (Tinsley). 1867.
“It [the above novel] drew striking pictures of the relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland, the Irish Famine, and the Rebellion of 1848: and it showed a warm glow of sympathy with the Irish peasantry, which no one would have suspected in a man apparently so wholly out of touch with politics.” [From “Life of W. G. Wills” by Freeman Wills. London. 1898].
WILMOT-BUXTON, E. M.