The Story of the Shannon Where the River Shannon Flows.
By Richard Haywa . (Harrap. I2S. 6d.) FOR a thousand people who have crossed the Shannon at Athlen, or ICillaloe you would scarcely find one who has followed ..‘ stream for twenty miles ; and the country through which it flo., from its rise in Cavan down to the Limerick border is as litt.c visited as any in Ireland. Mr. Hayward set out to make a fi :- illustrating its course and then wrote a book about the associations, legendary, historic, literary .and social, which he encountered. Most of this has often been told before, though not so continuously connected ; the nearest thing to new matter is the careful account of passenger traffic on the Grand Canal by " flyboat "—which covered the journey to Dublin quicker than a coach could do. We learn also how modern engineering has altered the landscape, not only about Limerick where most Irish people have seen the electric power works, but away in unknown country at Lough Allen, where the water level has been changed. The Shannon has always been one of the main facts in Ireland, in a strategic sense : now it has a new significance, first as a main source of the electric power which is t.verywhere distributed, and secondly as affording in • s estuary a terminal point of trans-Atlantic flight. Mr. Hayward saw the ' Atlantic Clipper ' arrive at Rineanna and saw it depart. That peaceful traffic is now suspended: We shall be lucky if there are not less welcome arrivals. But these questions are not considered in this convivial, rather undistin- guished " slap-you-on-the-back" kind of a book, which tells chieflY how pleasant. everybody was to the writer's party all along the
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