Mn. SHIN BULLOCK, who has already done good work as
a delineator of rural life and manners in Ulster, has turned his intimate knowledge of that province to new and sensational account in The Red Leaguers, which is nothing more nor less than a picture of Ireland in open rebellion in the near future. Yet though the subject is sensational, nothing could be less so than the handling : between The Red Leaguers and the ordinary " invasion novel " there is the widest of gulfs. To begin with, instead of trying to give us a general idea of the progress of the insurrection or tracing the movements of the leaders, he concentrates his entire attention on the operations of one small commando in Fermanagh over a limited area, with every inch of which he is evidently familiar, and with the aid of a sketch-map enables his readers to follow every step of the way traversed.—The names are obviously disguised, but we gather that the townlands included in the map are on the western bank of Lough Erne.—When it is borne in mind that in Fermanagh—as in other of the Ulster counties—you have Orange alternating with Roman Catholic districts, or sometimes enclosed by them, and vice versd, and that even in normal times the sectarian cleavage tends to frequent and violent col- lisions, it will be easily understood how within the limited area chosen by the author this antagonism is capable of intense and deadly expression in time of civil war. The principal actors on both sides are well known to each other, and their antipathy in peace is kindled to fury when the insurrection breaks out. To exacerbate matters still further, the protagonists on either side are rival suitors for the hand of the same woman, and by way of a finishing touch the captain of the insurgent commando is a Protestant, and regarded as a renegade as well as traitor by the loyalists of the neighbourhood. But although the element of romance is introduced early into the narrative—it is the rejection of James Shaw by Leah Hynes that finally induces him to cast in his lot with the rebels—the heroine's decision is so irrevocable as to relegate the love interest to a subsidiary position throughout. The book depends for its appeal, not on its treatment of the tender passion, but on its relentless analysis of some of the least engaging and admirable traits of the Irish character as tested in the stress of inter- necine conflict.
The narrative is conduoted throughout with a dispassionate circumstantiality which is curiously impressive, and the story of the opening raid of the Armoy Commando, the futile efforts of the captain to hold his men in check and prevent unnecessary bloodshed, the reprisals of the Protestants, and the siege of Rhamus Castle is told with a simple directness which renders it hard to believe that one is not listening to the recital by an eyewitness of events that actually occurred. Captain Shaw spares no one, least of all himself. Perhaps it may be contended that in him the critic and the man of action are blended to an extent difficult to match in real life. His patriotism is so constantly hampered and neutralised by pessimism and distrust, disillusionment follows so swiftly on exultation, that his adoption of the r6le of the soldier of fortune is somewhat hard to comprehend. There remains • The Bed Ungava. By Shan F. Bulloci. London : Nothnon and CO, Dad the motive of wounded pride, the desire to prove himself the better man in the sight of the woman whose whole heart is given to his rival, and it is in his unconsciousness of the hope- lessness of his efforts that his chief claim to the reader's sympathy resides. Though the fortune of war for a while is on the side of the rebels, Shaw himself is captured by his rival, and on his release not only abandons his suit, but takes an active part in reuniting the lovers. The Bed Leaguers, in fine, is an honest, uncompromising, painfully engrossing book, in which the extreme advocates of national aspirations and of Protestant ascendency are handled with a merciless im- partiality which cannot make for the popularity of the novel with the majority of Irish readers.
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