Ireland's Darling

Being Blind, Great Raftery Knew More than He Heard

The Story. Strong and dark and young--and all blind--Great Raftery went the length and breadth of Ireland in Queen Anne's day. He made songs for the people and songs for himself of his love for them and for Ireland. Before usurers and poverty had fallen upon the country, the Rafterys had been fine folk. No man lived to call Great Raftery other than an Irish gentleman. No taphouse, farm cottage, hall or castle 'but hailed him as Ireland's dar ling and had bed, board and homage for him at any hour.

Great Raftery came upon Hilaria, a small Spanish woman, and he making a poem at the Galway dockside one sun down. The Welshman Daffyd Evans of Claregalway passed like another shadow between Raftery and the sun when Hilaria, who one night sang a song of the harlots of Cadiz, said she was of the Welshman's house. Being blind, Raftery knew more than she sang.

Raftery and Hilaria were married, with a street woman and a beggar to witness; and Raftery spared the Welshman of his dagger when the cringing misshapen scoundrel would have spread the past like a blight over the newly wed couple. They went out upon the open roads to County Mayo; and when she made her confessional, telling of her eagle heart and her childhood's hard usage, Great Raftery laid aside his harp and caught her to him.

A frayed but punctilious sergeant; a rough highland boy, with teeth like a trap and a knife, a yellow tunic and yellow kilt; a harp with "I am the Queen of Harps" graved on its front pillar, the Red Hand of Ulster beneath and the maker's and singers' boasts beneath that--these are also in the story.

The Significance. To read this latest of Donn Byrne's books is to walk a quiet way by the sea in Ireland and among greening hills and over the wide ends of the earth, with a kindly, brave man whose talk is chiefly mellow reminiscence. Because he thinks of gone days and people that live no longer, he thinks simply. His telling is not confused with detail. Because he is kindly and brave, he tells wistfully and with honesty of emphasis, without false pity for dead glories nor false praise for ancient virtues. Being Irish and a mellow man, he tells with rich gusto and whimsy, so restrained that their bursts give pleasure like that of finding a wild bird's nest or bathing alone in the sea or fully remembering an old, old song.

The Critics. The Literary Review. "In these parlous times of realism, Donn Byrne is the blade of green, romantic grass in a long, long stretch of sand. Baptize him 'Oasis' if you will."

The Bookman: "Byrne's prose has the languorous beat of a Keats sonnet."

The Author. Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne was born in Manhattan, with a long north-of-Ireland genealogy. From three on, he grew up on the family estate in Ireland, where he heard Gaelic and faery lore. His college learning he got at Dublin, Paris and Leipzig. In 1911, he began an editorial apprenticeship in the U. S. Until he wrote Messer Marco Polo, few guessed his genius. Lately Changeling, The Wind Bloweth and Blind Raftery have marked him as of the high company of true romanticists.

New Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

UNITY--J, D. Beresford--Bobbs Merrill ($2.50). Katherine was a poet; Louise was adept at watercolor painting; Emily played the violin. Katherine Louise Emily Willoughby had to reconcile the talents, passions, ambitions of these people. So she adopted the accurate sobriquet, Unity, and spent her life trying to make it fit. She married a man, Brian Jessup, who went in swimming drunk, at midnight, in Sidney, Australia. She married an automaton, Michael Lord Mowbray, of whom she felt she was unworthy because he could not understand her. But only Adrian Gore, the man with the grey eyes, could give her Unity. This book is the elegant elaboration of a somewhat frayed psychological formula. It fails to convince because the author attempts to show how a human doll works by manufacturing instead of analyzing one. It does not fail to interest because Mr. Beresford is a capable craftsman.

GREEN THURSDAY--Julia Peterkin-- Knopf ($2.50). Author Peterkin is a lady of quality who lives on a great and isolated plantation in South Carolina. The people who serve her, the people who are her neighbors, the people she watches over, are black. In this book she writes about them. No wild crapshooters are they, no barrelhouse kings, cakewalk princes, or skull-faced witch-men. They are Negroes who pick cotton, plough fields, raise pickaninnies.

There is old Maum Hannah, squatter, who asked the Lord what to do when a white-trash gentleman built a house on her land and was going to make her tear down her cabin--who got a sign from the Lord, and burnt that house to white fine ashes, such as fell out of her corncob pipe when she prayed. There is Killdee who ploughed on Green Thursday--Ascension Day--the day Jesus went back to God, wherefore he expected to be scourged, and was, for that night his little girl, Baby Rose, was burnt to death in the cookfire. After that Killdee hated God. Vengeance was all right, but it didn't seem square to burn a baby.

Most of the stories are about Killdee, his wife, Rose, and Missie, the little changeling with the pointed chin, the curving lips, the delicate bluish bloom on black cheeks, who came to stay with them. The blacks live so near the earth their roots go down into it like the roots of trees. Mrs. Peterkin understands these twisted roots, their fumbling, struggling, grappling, and the secret chemistries that work in them-- sorrow and wonder, sweetness and regret, life and love and death.

A Wandering Figure

Why Not Write a Novel, Mr. Bercovici?

Konrad Bercovici is one of these walrus-mustached foreigners who give a touch of the exotic to the reaches of the Hotel Algonquin, Manhattan. Two new books of his are on the autumn lists--Around the World in New York and lliana, a collection of gypsy stories. His play, Costa's Daughter, will soon be unveiled to the glances of Broadway. Bercovici is a Rumanian, born there in 1882. He came to this country in 1916, but no amount of American sunlight and air, fortunately, can erase the swarthy hue of his person or the sleek ebon of hair and mustache.

I have known Bercovici for some years. It was John O'Hara Cosgrave of the Sunday World who first made use of his talent for limning the odd foreign character in a pseudo-fact story of New York life. Around the office of the World Bercovici used to be a wandering and slow-moving figure, his soft voice puncturing the bang of typewriters, smoothly but insistently. He is one of those quiet people, born to be persistent and destined for success. He and his ilk are important to America because they furnish us with a type of poetry which enriches our literature without degenerating our standards. Bercovici is essentially romantic; but he is essentially wholesome. I have often wished that persons of his type could be spread more widely through the country. They would bring a new vision to the small towns of the North, South and West--only it would, perhaps, be impossible for them to fit into the groove of the small town. Here in New York, they drift sooner or later to their proper sphere of influence and prosperity. They become our only real friends. They are much-needed color spots in the Anglo-Saxon drabness.

If I knew the town of New York as well as Konrad Bercovici does, I should be sure never to be bored of an evening. In this latest book of his, he tries to explain the foreign quarters, and does it admirably; but the joy of discovery can never be ours if we follow a guide book. I shall never forget one or two early pilgrimages with him among strange coffee houses and narrow streets. Why not write a novel, Mr. Bercovici, that will catch the impressive magic of cosmopolitan New York?

J. F.

RAFTKIY -- Donn Byrne -- Century ($2.50).