FICTION.
THE FOLK OF FURRY FARM.f
YET another name has to be added to the long roll of Irish women, beginning with Maria Edgeworth, who have won distinction as writers of fiction. Miss Pardon, the newcomer, needed no literary chaperon : but, if she was to have one, nobody could have discharged that delicate duty more agreeably than "George A. Birmingham," who, in a genial, whimsical, provocative introduction, mixes up jest and earnest, sound criticism and raillery, in the way we know so well. But he does not say a word too much in praise of Miss Pardon's work. For one thing, as he reminds us, it deals with what, from the point of view of romance, is a new part of Ireland. Western Leinster is a land more
• Memories of Diokems. By Percy Fitzgerald. Bristol: J. W. Arroznanith. [12a. 6(1. net.]
t Ti. FoLk of Furry Fem. By B. F. Pardon. With an Introduction by George A. Birmingham. London: J. Nisbet and Co. [6..] familiar to forhunters than to poets. It has hitherto had no votes sacer like Miss Letts, who has done for Wicklow what "Moira O'Neill" did for the glens of Antrim. Whether the people of Meath and Wicklow will appreciate the service rendered them by Miss Pardon we cannot say. In other districts people who write books about the residents are often regarded as enemies by them. Synge is no prophet in the Aran Islands. But we can hardly imagine that Miss Purdon is likely to give offence by a chronicle which, in its essentials, is so thoroughly kindly. She has plenty of independence, but it is not the frigid impartiality of the student who contemplates the vagaries and sufferings of human nature like a connoisseur or collector. She shows her detachment by giving us a faithful picture of Irish peasant society without ever once breathing a syllable of politics, or remotely alluding to the equipment and machinery of modern life. The dramatis personae are all simple folk, most of them poor; the entire action passes within a radius of a few miles from a country village ; and only on one occasion, and at second hand, do we catch so much as a glimpse of the "quality." "George Birmingham" remarks that a first merit of Miss Pardon's work is the fidelity with which she reproduces the dialect of the peasant class about whom she writes, 'She could not—no single person could—have invented all the phrases and expressions which she has put into the months of the characters of her stories. We have in her book the living tongue spoken by a neglected class of Irish- men." That is probably quite true, but mere fidelity is in itself no guarantee that the result will be entertaining or suggestive or stimulating. The best proof that we can give that these qualities are to be found in The Folk of Furry Farm is the following brief anthology compiled from its pages :— Of a rained house: "Whatever it used to be the Heffernans I knew would just fasten a calf in it, maybe, or put a goose to hatch there the way her mind wouldn't be ria, it being a very quiet corner." A variant for "in tin long run": "In the heel of the hunt." Of a lonesome house : "There wasn't a neighbour within the bawl of an ass of it."
Of the appearance of a lame beggar, "Ms pockets would be like sideboards, the way he would have them stuck out with meat and eggs and so on, that he would be given along the road." Of a carroty-headed man: "And he vrid a head upon him that you'd think should fun, if he put it into could water, it's that red. And the mouth of him! the same as if it was roade wid a blow of a shovel !"
From a passage on the rearing of poultry, "There's one tidy little hayro of a hen, her with a top-knot, that I'd have a great wish for.
Of a wily woman: "She was that clever, she could knot eels, the people said." Of a returned prodigal: "Very slaved-looking he was ; with his feet on the world, you might say, his brogues were so worn and broken."
Of a bridegroom "Feeling as fresh in himself as a rolled ass."
In praise of fatness "I have it now,' she thought, laughing to herself; 'it's that bright boyo, Patsy Ratigan, as sure as God made little apples! And the great big size of him now! The broad red face on him! and he the full of his skin; instead of the way he was, so thin that there wasn't as much fat upon him as would grease a gimlet! And the thick back to his neck ! and used to have a long neck upon him, like a distracted gander peeping down a pump-hole for poreen.s [small potatoes]: " Throughout Miss Pardon relies on the turn of the phrase to give the spirit of the dialect and uses only a minimum of phonetic: spelling. That is the true and artistic method. But Miss Purdon is much more than a collector or coiner of picturesque and humorous phrases. She has a keen eye for character, a genuine gift of description, and a vein of pure and unaffected sentiment, Michael Heffernan, the owner of Furry Farm and the central figure of this loosely knit chronicle, is a middle- aged, ungainly, reserved, and somewhat morose man in whom a core of goodness is overlaid by a crusty exterior. The book is largely concerned with his persistent efforts and repeated failures to find a wife. On no fewer than three occasions he is supplanted by younger and more attractive suitors, but in the end he chooses wisely, and makes a good woman happy. Michael is himself a figure verging on the pathetic, yet saved from disaster by his tenacity and readiness to acquiesce in the inevitable. Serious in himself, he is a constant source of humour in others, and the prosperity which comes from his thrift and shrewdness only makes him a magnet to all the idlers and gossips of the neighbourhood. Foremost amongst these is Dark Moll, a blind woman who lives by her wits
and her skill as a fiddler. Dark Moll, who is not as blind as she makes out, is "as cute as a pet fox." Her fund of gossip and her fiddle make her a welcome guest in every cottage in the countryside. She has elevated deference to a fine art, and though her diplomacy is always directed to the main chance, it is tempered both by malice and romance. Another most engaging figure is Peetcheen Caffrey, an inveterate idler, who reminds one of the famous description of the Irishman in Sydney, who went about "looking for work and praying to God that he wouldn't find it." He was civil- spoken and willing, but anxious for nothing so much as to keep out of the way. "Whenever there was talk of a job to be done, Peeteheen was the last to make any attempt at it ; frightened, as it were, at the thought of it." He was always left out in the cold ; never the best at anything: "in fact no one could say anything bad that ever he did. To be sure, be never did anything, one way or the other."
There is no hero in The Folk of Furry Farm, but there is no one, with the exception of Patsy Ratigan, the "American," who excites anything approaching to antipathy. Miss Pardon does not discard satire, but compassion is her great quality. The episode of "A Daylight Ghost" is a homely but moving variant on the tragedy of cross-purposes immortalized in Ileine's Ein Jiingling liebt ein dfddehen
"It's dreadful, when you have to look on, at someone else getting the very thing that Tort would give your heart's blood for ! Ah, dreadful! even if it s someone you love that's robbing you. And it makes it no better, if the one that's getting what you want is maybe not caring two straws about it; not even knowing it's there to be had. Nelly didn't; she had no more notion of Jim and how he felt than the man in the moon. Christina could not have held out at all if she had known," The tragedy of Rosy Heffernan's return is not less poignant than that of Christina's disappearance ; indeed, the whole volume is strangely compounded of mirth and melancholy, though the dominant impression left by its perusal is one of confidence in the essential kindliness of Irish human nature, and the goodness and gentleness of Irish women. We may take leave of Miss Purdon's admirable book by quoting the beautiful description of Mary Molally as Heffernan saw her on her return from the fair " She was standing by the little ass, with her hand on its neck, and her head a bit bowed, and the look in her face would put you in mind of the picture of the Virgin Mary in the chapel, it was so sorrowful and patient. She was tired out, with the heat of the day and the noise and confusion in the fair; and she had on the big blue cloak that came to her from the mother. It was the weight of two cloaks, it was so good and heavy. And she had a blue handkerchief on her head, tied under her chin, and a grand big blue apron, over her red skirt, that was made of wool from her own sheep, and by her own two hands. Those colours were in the picture, too."
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