Obrazy na stronie
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BY

SHANE LESLIE

I come of Ireland
And of the Holy Land
Of Ireland.

Good Sir, pray I thee,

For of saint charity

Come and dance with me

In Ireland.

Fourteenth Century MS. (Bodleian Libr.)

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS

1923

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MY DEAR MARJORIE,-If you will be so kind as to accept this volume, I haste to add how little it will enlighten you on Ireland. Hitherto her only political aspects have been the Irish defensive or the Anglicising British; and will remain so until Ireland is viewed internationally and less through red or green glasses. Literature likewise has tended to sheer Comedy or total Tragedy, though Cervantes and Dickens invite Irish writers to essay the medium of the pathetic grotesque. Grotesque then you will find this book in which no existing Irish families are really portrayed, though odds and ends have been collected from many to make the mixed mosaic. The Deluces and Clontibrets are illusionary, characters like Vivian de Brock and Father White are quite visionary, though others are parodies, shadows and silhouettes of many, who have passed through the distorting limelight that burns at the narrow corners of Irish life. And in despair of presenting the Camera to the Irish Cameleon I have made the scenes as unreal to life as possible. If they are realistic in Art that is another matter: MISE DO CHARA SEAN.

DUMB WOMAN'S LANE, RYE,
Sept. 24, 1923.

546054

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