Read more
Excerpt from Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, Vol. 1 of 4
Famine and the subsequent clearances are responsible for the radical change which has come over the people. In essen tials, no doubt, Carleton's. Ireland is the same as ours, but the typical peasant, the genuine article, seems to have dis~ appeared, or is fast disappearing, with his faction and party fights, his wakes and patterns, his pipers and his native Gaelic. As an eulogist of Carleton has expressed it, the best of the older Ireland has vanished in the swamps and savan nabs of the Irish exile's distant home. It might be added that the courts and alleys of London and other great English cities have seen some of its last fading traces, and it has been but a memory or a tradition with the past and present genera tion of Irishmen. Carleton has preserved its image intact, and in his stories one may live again with the Ireland of the past. In no other writer do you get the Irish atmosphere so clearly, so unmistakabl There have been and are many admirable Irish novelists, but their transcripts of Irish peasant life seem the faintest outlines in comparison with the stern reality - the forcible truth of Carleton's descriptions. Their peasants are half English and their landscapes almost wholly so. Carleton is Irish through and through - intensely Irish, exclusively Irish.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
