Study of the origin of Ribbonism, and of its effects upon countryside. The hero is an emissary of the Society. The latter is represented as organized and worked by a set of self-interested rascals who deluded the peasantry with hopes of removing grievances, whilst they themselves pursued their personal ends, and were often at the same time in the pay of the Castle. The Government spy system is denounced.
⸺ DENIS O’SHAUGHNESSY GOING TO MAYNOOTH. Pp. 200. (Routledge). 1845. Illustrated by W. H. Brooke.
⸺ ART MAGUIRE. (Duffy). 1s. [1847]. Still reprinted. (N.Y.: Sadleir). 0.15.
The story of a man ruined by drink. Conventional and obviously written for a purpose, yet enlivened by scenes of humour and pathos, written in Carleton’s best vein. Dedicated in very flattering terms to Father Theobald Mathew, and irreproachable from a Catholic point of view. Incidentally there is an interesting picture of one of Father Mathew’s meetings. Father Mathew himself thought highly of the book.
⸺ THE BLACK PROPHET. Pp. 408. (Lawrence & Bullen). [1847]. Introd. by D. J. O’Donoghue, and Illustr. by J. B. Yeats. 1899. (N.Y.: Sadleir). 1.50.
The plot centres in a rural murder mystery, but there are many threads in the narrative. As a background there is the Famine and typhus-plague of 1817, described with appalling power and realism. Of this the Author himself was a witness, and he assures us that he has in no wise exaggerated the horrors. All through there are passages of true and heart-rending pathos, lit up by the humorous passages of arms between Jemmy Branigan and his master, the middleman, Dick o’ the Grange. Many peculiar types of that day appear: Skinadre the rural miser, Donnell Dhu the Prophecyman. There is not a word in the book that could hurt Catholic or national feeling.
⸺ THE EMIGRANTS OF AHADARRA. [1847]. (Routledge). 1s. (N.Y.: Sadleir). 1.50.
A story of rural life, depicting with much beauty and pathos the sadness of emigration. The book is first and foremost a love story and has no didactic object. It contains one of Carleton’s most exquisite portraits of an Irish peasant girl. The struggle between her love and her stern and uncompromising zeal for the faith is finely drawn. O’Finigan, with his half-tipsy grandiloquence, is also cleverly done. A kindly spirit pervades the book, and it is almost entirely free from the bad taste, coarseness, and rancour which show themselves at times in Carleton.
⸺ THE TITHE-PROCTOR. (Belfast: Simms & M’Intyre). [1849].
Founded on real events, the murder of the Bolands, a terrible agrarian crime. Written in a mood of savage resentment against his countrymen. D. J. O’Donoghue says of this book: “It is a vicious picture of the worst passions of the people, a rancorous description of the just war of the peasantry against tithes, and some of the vilest types of the race are there held up to odium, not as rare instances of villainy, but as specimens of humanity quite commonly to be met with.” Yet there are good portraits and good scenes. Among the former are Mogue Moylan, the Cannie Soogah, Dare-devil O’Driscoll, Buck English, and the Proctor himself. The latter, hated of the people, is painted in dark colours. “As a study of villainy,” says Mr. O’Donoghue, “the book is convincing. There is one touching and fine scene—that in which the priest stealthily carries a sack of oats to the starving Protestant minister and his family.” “As a study of Irish life,” says Mr. O’Donoghue again, “even in the anti-tithe war time it is a perversion of facts, and a grotesque accumulation of melodramatic horrors.”