The six months’ visit of a young English heiress to the stately, dilapidated mansion of Lismoyle, in the Co. Tipperary, involving a comedy of courtship, many amusing situations, and some description of the small social affairs of the county. No Irish “problem” is touched upon.
The Scenes of some others of her novels are laid partly in Ireland, e.g., TWO MASTERS (Chatto), 1890; and INTERFERENCE (Chatto), 1894.
CROKER, T. Crofton. Born in Cork, 1798; died in London, 1854. Was one of the most celebrated of Irish antiquaries, folk-lorists, and collectors of ancient airs. He helped to found the Camden Society (1839), the Percy Society (1840), and the British Archæological Association (1843). Was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and of many Continental societies. Wrote or edited a great number of works. His leisure hours were spent in rambles in company with a Quaker gentleman of tastes similar to his own. In these excursions he gained that intimate knowledge of the people, their ideas, traditions, and tales, which he afterwards turned to good account.
⸺ LEGENDS OF THE LAKES. [1829]. Illustr. by Maclise.
Killarney. A series of stories, similar to those in the Fairy Legends, of fairies, ghosts, banshees, &c.
⸺ KILLARNEY LEGENDS. Pp. 294. 16mo. (London: Fisher). Some steel engravings (quite fanciful). [1831]. Second edition, 1879.
An abbreviated ed. of Legends of the Lakes. Second ed. was edited by Author’s son, T. F. D. Croker. Topographical Index.
⸺ FAIRY LEGENDS AND TRADITIONS OF THE SOUTH OF IRELAND. New and complete edition. Illustr. by Maclise & Green. 1882.
First appeared 1825; often republished since. Classified under the headings:—The Shefro; the Cluricaune; the Banshee; the Phooka; Thierna na oge (sic); the Merrow; the Dullahan, &c. “I make no pretension to originality, and avow at once that there is no story in my book which has not been told by half the old women of the district in which the scene is laid. I give them as I found them” (Pref.). This is the first collection of Irish folk-lore apart from the peddler’s chap-books. Dr. Douglas Hyde (Pref. to Beside the Fire) calls this a delightful book, and speaks of Croker’s “light style, his pleasant parallels from classics and foreign literature, and his delightful annotations,” but says that he manipulated for the English market, not only the form, but often the substance, of his stories. Scott praised the book very highly in the notes to the 1830 ed. of the Waverley Novels, as well as in his Demonology and Witchcraft. The original ed. was trans. into German by the Bros. Grimm, 1826, and into French by P. A. Dufour, 1828.