23 SEPTEMBER 1871, Page 21

WILLIAM CARLETON.*

CA.RLETOWS success as a story-teller—he hardly rises to the dignity of a novelist—is due to the minute delicacy and accuracy with which ho depicted the manners and customs of the Irish peasantry at a time when the real life of that quaint and original people was almost unknown in England and Scotland. There is no inventive force shown in the plot of his stories, no condensa- tion of passion or pathos in his characters. Humour there is in many of his pages, but what attentive observer of Irish manners could fail to catch some reflections of the qualities that excite either laughter or tears ? That Mr. Carleton has been an attentive observer of the ways of his humble fellow-countrymen is his chief boast. In apologizing for the introduction of some particulars of • 75yrit's and Stories of the Irish Peasantry. By William Carleton. New Edition, with the Author's latest oorrootlowi, an introduction, and explanatory notes. London: William Togg. I his own life, he says : —" These details would never have been obtruded on the reader were it not from an anxiety to satisfy him that in undertaking to describe the Irish peasantry as they are, I approached the difficult task with advantages of knowing them which, perhaps, few other Irish writers ever possessed ; and this is the only merit which I claim." The narrative on which this modest claim is founded has an interest of its own. Born among the dark mountains and green vales of Tyrone, William Carleton was the fourteenth child of a humble peasant farmer, whose natural gifts and virtues, as well as those of his wife, are warmly extolled by their affectionate son. The memory of the father was stored " with legends, tales, traditions, customs, and superstitious," which, poured into the willing ear of the'son, furnished materials for his subsequent writings. Mary Kelly, the mother, in whose veins flowed the blood of Irish minstrels and song-makers, "pos- sessed the sweetest and most exquisite of human voices," and could " raise the keene," or Irish cry over the dead, with such irresistible pathos that her attendance at any wake was sure to attract an unusual number of quasi-mourners, drawn from the farthest limits of the district by the fame of her wild and wailing notes. With a double inheritance of poetic legend from one parent and of what Carlyle calls " tune " from the other, William Carleton ought to have been a poet. The faculty divine, if ever he had it, does not shine out in his published works. The difficulties of his education made him a careful observer of things around him, and a moderately good prose-writer. His earliest lessons in " book larnin " were received from a Connaughtman, Pat Frayne, the prototype of Mat Kavanagh in one of Carleton's best stories, " The Hedge School." Two years later he was placed under a classical teacher at Tulnavert, of whom he thus speaks with characteristic vehemence : —" This tyrannical blockhead, whose name I do not choose to mention, instead of being allowed to teach classics, ought to have been put into a strait-waistcoat or the stocks and either whipped once in every twenty-four hours or kept in a madhouse until the day of his death." This madman stands for the picture of the schoolmaster in the tale called " The Poor Scholar," the hero of which was one Quin, a poor, friendless lad, far from parents and friends, whom the master kicked and cuffed or thrashed with a cudgel by way of giving vent to his own cruel humour. An incident in Carle- ton's career furnished the ground-work of this same story. After two years' deprivation of schooling, which he spent in enthusiastic enjoyment of the sports and amusements of the country, with occasional participation in the labours of a small farm, he set out, under the advice of friends, for Munster, with a view to complete his education there as a "poor scholar." The parting from home was sad enough, and on reachiug the town of Granard his courage failed him ; during a troublous sleep he dreamt that he was pur- sued by a mad bull, and, accepting the dream as a warning, he returned to his home wretched from nervous excitement and physical fatigue. The robust exercises in which he engaged never entirely overcame the defects of a nervous temperament. Ho had acquired sonic knowledge, and made the most of it among his ignorant neighbours. This phase of his life is depicted in the sketch of "Denis O'Shaughnessy going to Maynooth." At the age of nineteen, " fired," as he says, " by a romantic curiosity," he took part in one of those strange pilgrimages to Lough Derg, or the purgatory of St. Patrick. The lake lies among the bleak and desolate mountains of Donegal. To make a pilgrimage or "perform a station" thither is an event in an Irishman's life, and to young Carleton it was the turning-point of his career. He had been destined for the priesthood, but the journey to Lough Derg disgusted him with the profession and determined him to abandon it. While turning him from one calling the incident was the means of introducing him to another, for a few years later, namely, in 1829, he was induced by the Rev. Cams. Otway to put his reminiscences of the pilgrimage on paper, and under the auspices of that gentleman this, Carleton's first literary production, appeared in print. Previously to this he had tried tutoring in a farmer's house, but his natural restlessness was aggravated just at this time by the perusal of Gil Bias, which set him off in an adventurous quest that brought him ultimately into Dublin with two shillings and ninepence in his pocket, and nothing more. Further details of his history are not furnished. Aspirants to literary fame may, however, learn from his example that the most friendless and penniless of men may achieve some success if he fix his heart and mind steadfastly on one object. Carleton's one con- trolling desire was to create, or rather revive, in Ireland a litera- ture that might be called national. Scott in the Waverley Novels was performing wonders in behalf of Scotland, and Edinburgh, with its Constable and Blackwood, had been saluted as the modern Athens. Let but an Irish writer produce a book about Ireland that an Irish publisher would give to the world, and the thing was done. This did Carleton through Messrs. Curry and Co., by bringing out the first two volumes of Traits and Stories of Irish Peasantry. Others have trodden the same path—•some with more, some with less success—Miss Edgeworth, John Banim, Samuel Lover, Lady Morgan, Mrs. Hall, Maxwell, Lever, and Crofton Croker —but none have set themselves so thoroughly and con- sciously to the task as William Carleton. Every page of his works is a transcript from real life obtained by patient and reiterated observation. His literary work is like that of an artist who composes a picture by selecting from his accumulated sketches from nature the most suitable and homogeneous " bits." The mental crucible by which details are fused into one harmonious whole may be wanting in power, in the intensity called genius, but the minute fidelity of the several parts is indubitable. This truth of detail it is that renders Carletou's works useful as a study to any one seeking acquaintance with the peculiarities of Irish character.

The following sample, taken at random from one of the less

celebrated stories, " Larry M'Farland's Wake," exhibits simply skill in minute observation, resulting in real pathos. Larry, a thrift-

less ne'er-do-weel, nobody's enemy but his own, save that he beats his wife and children and fondles them in turn, is about to take a short journey that proves his last :

"Larry seemed to be in better humour this night and more affec- tionate with Sally and the children ; he'd often look at them and appear to feel as if something was over him, but no one observed that till afterwards. Sally herself seemed kinder to him, and oven went over and sat beside him on the stool, and putting her arm round his neck kissed him in a joking way; but still as if it wasn't all a joke, poor thing, for at times she looked sorrowful. Larry got his arm about her, and looked often and often on her and on the children, in a way that ho wasn't used to do, until the tears fairly came into his eyes. Sally avournoeu,' says

ho, looking at her, I saw you when you had another look from what you have this night, when it wasn't asy to follow you in the parish or out of it ;' and when he said this he could hardly spake.—'Whist, Larry, acushla,' says she, don't be spaking that way sure we may do very well yet, place God ; I know, Larry, there was a groat dale of it—maybe it was all—my fault, for I wasn't to you, in any way of care and kindness, what I ought to be.'—' Well, well, aroon! says Larry,' say no more ; you might have been all that, only it was my fault ; but where's Dick that I struck so terribly last night. Dick! oomo over to me, agra, and sit down here beside me. Kiss me, Dick, amiable! and God knows your face is pale, and that's not with good feeling anyhow ; I'm sorry Dick ugra for what I done to you last night ; forgive your father, Dick, for I think my heart's breaking, aoushla, and-that you won't have me long with you. Poor Dick, who was naturally an affectionate gorsoon, kissed his father and cried bitterly. Sally sobbed as if she would have dropped on the spot ; but the rest began, and betwixt seoulding and cheering them up, all was as well as ever.

. ........ . .

In the meantime, terrible blasts would come over and through the house, making the ribs crack, so that you would think that the roof would be taken away at waust. The lire was getting low, and Sally had no more turf in the house ; the childher crouched closer and closer about it, their poor hungry-looking pale faces made paler with fear that the house might come down and their father from home, and with worse fear that something might happen to him under such a tempest of wind and rain."

In the dark and stormy night, Sally, as she lies cold and trembling under the scanty covering of bed-clothes, made scantier by the

absence of her husband's coat, seems to hear the " banshee " in the moaning wind crying out her husband's name, and her terror increases tenfold. Larry does not return, and in the morning his brother and neighbours scour the country in search of him. The last tragic touch of the story is as vivid in realistic description as anything in Dickens :— " Dick wont away, but hadn't gone far when ho mot his uncle Tom coming on before the rest. ' Uncle,' says Dick, ' did you got my father ? for I must fly back with word to my mother like lightning.'—' Oome here, Dick,' says Tom, ' God help you, my poor bouchal, you can't go back to your mother till I see her first.' But he was saved the trouble of breaking the dismal tidings to poor Sally ; for as she stood watching the crowd, sho saw a door carried upon their shoulders with something like a man stretched upon it. She turned in, feeling as if a bullet had gone through her head, and sat down with hor back to the door, for fraid she might see the thruth, for she could not be quite sure they were at such a distance. At last she ventured to take another look-out, for she couldn't bear what sho felt within her, and just as she rose and came to the door the first thing she saw corning down the hill, a little above the house, was the body of hor husband strotohod on a door dead. Sho had soon enough, God help her for she took labour that instant, and in about two hours afterwards was stretched a corpse beside her husband, with hor heart-broken and desolate orphans in an uproar of outher misery about them.' " The reader must understand that the narrator of the story is one of a group of personages assembled at the house of Ned 111'Keown, a man who kept a whiskey shop near the cross roads of Kilrudden, in the valley of the Black Pig.

Upon the whole, we are pleased to see this new edition of Carleton's stories, believing, as we do, that the perusal of them

will promote kindliness of feeling towards the Irish people. Acts of ferocious cruelty, such as we hear of too frequently in Ireland, are no true indication of the national character, which is that of an affectionate, impulsive, merry people, who may be led by their feelings into any good path. Should a Royal Court ever be established in Dublin, with the support of a large and influential resident gentry, who would take a personal interest in the welfare of their tenants and cottiers, we should look forward with the greatest confidence to the final pacification of Ireland.