FICTION.
MARY OF THE WINDS.•
Tax materials for these stories and sketches, the author tells us, have been mostly gathered from old people living in the remote parts of Kerry. Therein lie their strength and their weakness. They are full of poetry and pathos, folk-lore and old superstitions. But this is the hour of the young, and these tales, though often dealing with the effect of the war, are almost entirely concerned with its influence on the old or middle-aged. They throw no light on the movements and forces which have kept the majority of Irishmen aloof from the struggle. The passionate grief of the mothers in. " Irish Tears " or the more restrained sorrow of the fathers in " The Farmers' Sons " is void of any anti-English ani- mosity. The widow distraught by her loss curses the Kaiser. John Casey is moved to ask : " Is there no God this day to be listening to the roar rising from the great wheel, turning through the night of storm, to tear to pieces the gentlemen of the world and with them our hearts ? " In the very old the attitude is sometimes one of extreme detachment, or, as with old Breda, of a curious exultation in the sins and joys of her youth. The most attractive of these old people is Jerry O'Flaherty, a gardener with a passion for his work. He moves with his employers to a new house and lays out a new garden. When the new house is burned down and the family scattered he remains on. September, the month of fate for the household, brings fresh disasters, but nothing can dislodge Jerry from his post. He labours by night and day ; in the delirium of his illness he is always among his flowers and recovers by sheer force of will : " 'tie better to dig in the moonlight than to lie on the bed " ; and when one of the family, "who came home in the spring, asked after his health, the answer was that only two veronicas had been killed by the winter's frost." Of the legends, that which gives its name to the collection tells of a woman who sold her soul to a strange harper for fairy gold which nobody would touch, who strove in vain to cancel her bargain, but was saved by the winds which scattered the gold, and bore her soul to rest. This is told with great charm in that slightly idealized version of peasant narration adopted by Lady Gregory and other writers. The story of the farmer who married a beautiful girl who would not live in the country, but forced him to exchange comfort and prosperity for a hand-to-mouth existence in the town as a fiddler, is familiar to us. The woman ruined his life, but he never ceased to love her. " God ! how I loved that woman ! More than all the great world and all in it, north and south, east and west ; but a woman from the town, your Honour, and a man from the country can never, should never, no never marry at all ; but tell me now, wouldn't it be a queer thing now if it was not to myself I'd be fretting at all ? " The turn of phrase is often quite magical, as in the description of the girl whom the belated fiddler saw in a dream when he had lost his way in a fog. " She had much scenery to her face, eyes as blue as a calm sea, and three acres of golden hair hanging from her head." This is one of the few cheerful tales in the book ; another is of " Foxy John," the blind boy who recovered his sight after many fabulous adventures ; a third is that of the young man who heroically cheated the horo- scope which foretold that he would be struck by lightning on his wedding-day. " The Cobbler " is simply a record of racy talk among village gossips " A Song " describes the experience of a • Mary of the Wind*, and other Tales. By Bardeen. London : John Murray. lee. net.] visitor to two convents, in Ireland and Spain, and the transfor- mation of a child into a Mother Superior ; while " Over the Hills " is the unofficial diary of a Government Inspector sent to report on fishermen's homes in the South of Ireland. But whatever the theme, the treatment is fresh and poetical. Within the limits we have mentioned above, " Enedeen " is a most sympathetic observer, with a remarkable gift of recording or coining rare and expressive turns of speech.
Previous page
