Irish Jesuit Province

The Diary of Humphrey O'Sullivan. Part III by Michael McGrath; Humphrey O'SullivanReview by: A. de B.The Irish Monthly, Vol. 65, No. 774 (Dec., 1937), p. 863Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20514242 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 868

THE CHOLERA YEARS.

The Diary of Humphrey O'Sullivan. Part III. Edited by Rev. Michael

McGrath, S.J. (London (for the I.T.S.): Simpkln Marshall. 21/- net.)

This volume appeared in April. Delay in review has been due to the hope that the fourth and final volume of this famous Gaelic diary would be issued before this.

In the present volume, the Callan schoolmaster continues his Gaelic journal from January 1st, 1831, to the end of December, 1833. There is the same blend of vivid nature description, scraps of folk custom, proverbial passages, keen observations, as in the preceding volumes, and the picture of the Kilkenny countryside, in pre-Famine days, grows yet clearer and

more richly coloured. What a powerful novel O'Sullivan's material will make in some future artist's hands!

I have noted 18 references in the diary to the cholera which racked Ireland in 1833. O'Sullivan gives a terrible account of its onset. Among subjects on which Hulmphrey touches are these: the Feast of Fools, Irish in the

West Indies, why oats are cut before fully ripe, the growing of tobacco in all Kilkenny gardens, the tithes war, a visit by Daniel O'Connell, the tradi tion of St. Patrick and the shamrock (of which our scholars want to rob

us), the " day of the straws ", St. Brigid's day and St. John's day customs, the Big Wlnd in 1833.

Beautiful and apt sayings abound,-D'e4is caloid ciwnas; go mbeidh ti slan agus go leagaidh Dia do namhad; giolla gach sine an ceo. However, there are fewer purple patches in this volume than in those which pre ceded it.

Father McGrath continues to enrich his redaction, and his exquisite Eng lish version, with notes, which reveal exhaustive study of the text, as when the place-name Poll-a-Chapail is explained by a local legend, and the curious derivation of the Anglo-Irish name Clinton is given.

Students ambitious of a perfect command of modern Irish ought to find it Invaluable to collate O'Sullivan with his penetrating translator.

A. de B.

Fescism and Providence. J. K. Heydon. (Sheed and Ward. 5/-.) This pamphlet, intended chiefly for English Catholic readers, is an

attempt to prove that Fascism is the divinely appointed salvation of England. The learning paraded is immense: metaphysics, theology, biology, modern physics, mathematics, politics; and the manner of writing varies between polite, reasoned exposition and hysterical tub-thumping. " It seems not unreasonable and credulous and superstitious," the author writes, " but

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