TALES OF IRELAND

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 124, 19 February 1938, Page 7 (Supplement)

TALES OF IRELAND

"A Purse of Coppers,” by Sean O'Faolain (London: Jonathan Cape). In dedicating this volume of short stories to an old friend who had crossed to the Celtic Valhalla, Mr. O’Faolair calls it a “handful of modest life out of Ireland.” He has plucked out of the garden of Irish life a posy giving forth the sweet aroma of tilled Irish soil. There is in Mr. O’Faolain’s writing a fine artistry. He never rushes us headlong to an obvious conclusion. The end of a life, or a story, is never obvious; and all his stories ring true to life. His characters in this book are mostly simple folk—the farmer, the priest, the nun, the harum-scarum boy and the old Irish peasant. Many of the stories ring with the melancholy so Usual in Celtic writing. Even in those tales there is usually a saving strain of humour, injected gently, perhaps, to make the story not too painful. All the time the characters are real; they talk and act, not as characters in a story invented for the purpose out of the imagination, but rather as personalities, actually living, and acting their parts before our very eyes. Moot short stories are meet to be read in a train or on ship-board. These belong not to that class. These are to be read in the quiet of your home— SO flat you shall not be disturbed—lest the characters should be interrupted in their performance and disappear out of the Irish setting which Mr. O’Faolain has created. For if they did that, ancj the setting did not matter,_.they wOTldhpse*allliJiei?.!yirtue. __