Poets and Dreamers : Studies and Translations from the Irish.
By Lady Gregory. (John Murray. 6s.)—It need hardly be said that there is much that is curious and interesting in this volume. Perhaps the most characteristically Irish, or we should rather say Celtic, thing in it is the section entitled "Workhouse Dreams." " I was moved," writes Lady Gregory, "by the strange contrast between the poverty of the tellers and the splendours of the tales." Where in England would one find an old pauper telling stories of swans that turn into Kings' daughters ? The folk-tales are, like other folk-lore, variants of the ideas that are found everywhere ; the notable thing is their hold on the people. This is what makes Lady Gregory's book so full of interest. These are genuine products of the Irish soil that she has garnered. But an Englishman cannot read the book without a certain melancholy. He feels that the race-hatred is beyond all hope. His only com- fort is to believe that the Irishman does not mean all that he says. There is a poem, for instance, called the "Song of the Irish Transvaal Brigade,"—Lady Gregory thinks that it has "literary quality " ; to us it seems but poor stuff. It tells us how-
" With gun in band, we take our stand For Ireland in the fray."
Did the writer mean it ? Did he take his gun and make his stand? Or did he just write the poem and get his guinea for it? For the Irish Brigade had the truly Irish peculiarity about it that it con- tained all nationalities except the Irish. The Boer War was a splendid opportunity for the Irish malcontents, but they did not take it. The curious thing was that Irish regiments fought splendidly—on our side; while if but one out of ten of the able- bodied men who daily curse us had taken up the cause in earnest they might have turned the scale. The dilemma is this : If these Boer ballads truly represent Irish feeling, it would be madness to give an inch in the direction of Home-rule; if they do not, why make so much of them ?
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