“William Carleton was born on Shrove Tuesday, in the year 1798, when the pike was trying to answer the pitch-cap. He was the youngest of fourteen children. His father, a farmer of the town land of Prillisk, in the parish of Clogher, County Tyrone, was famous among the neighbors for his great knowledge of all the Gaelic charms, ranns, poems, prophecies, miracle-tales, and tales of ghost and fairy. His mother had the sweetest voice within the range of many baronies. When she sang at a wedding or lifted the keen at a wake, the neighbors would crowd in to hear her, as to some famous prima donna. Often, too, when she keened, the other keeners would stand round, silent, to listen. It was her especial care to know all old Gaelic songs, and many a once noted tune has died with her. A fit father and mother for a great peasant writer for one who would be called ‘the prose Burns of Ireland’.

“As the young Carleton grew up his mind filled itself brimful of his father’s stories and his mother’s songs. He has recorded how, many times, when his mother sat by her spinning-wheel, singing “The Trougha,” or “Shule Agra,” or some other mournful air, he would go over to her and whisper: “Mother, don’t sing that song; it makes me sorrowful.” Fifty years later he could still hum tunes and sing verses dead on all other lips.

“His education, such as it was, was beaten into him by hedge schoolmasters. Like other peasants of his time, he learned to read out of the Chap-books “Freney the Robber,” “Rogues and Rapparees”; or else, maybe, from the undesirable pages of “Laugh and Be Fat.” He sat under three schoolmasters in succession Pat Frayne, called Mat Kavanagh in Traits and Stories; O’Beirne of Findramore; and another whose name Carleton has not recorded, there being naught but evil to say of him. They were a queer race, bred by Government in its endeavor to put down Catholic education. The thing being forbidden, the peasantry had sent their children to learn reading and writing, and a little Latin even, under the “hips and haws” of the hedges. The sons of plowmen were hard at work construing Virgil and Horace, so great a joy is there in illegality.

“When Carleton was about fourteen he set out as ‘a poor scholar,’ meaning to travel into Munster in search of more perfect education. ‘The poor scholar’ was then common enough in Ireland. Many still living remember him and his little bottle of ink. When a boy had shown great attention to his books he would be singled out to be a priest, and a subscription raised to start him on his way to Maynooth. Every peasant’s house, as he trudged upon his road, would open its door to him, such honor had learning and piety among the poor. Carleton, however, plainly was intended for nothing of the kind. He did not get farther than Granard, where he dreamed that he was chased by a mad bull, and, taking this for an evil omen, went home. [469]

“He felt very happy when he came to his own village again, the uncomfortable priestly ambition well done with. He spent his time now in attending dances, wakes, and weddings, and grew noted as the best dancer and leaper in his district; nor had he many rivals with a spear and shillelah. When he was about nineteen a second pious fit sent him off on a pilgrimage to St. Patrick’s Purgatory, in Lough Derg. This ‘Purgatory,’ celebrated by Calderon, is an island where the saint once killed a great serpent, turned him into stone, and left his rocky semblance visible forever. Upon his return, his opinions, he states, changed considerably, and began slowly drifting into Protestantism.

“One day he came on a translation of Gil Blas and was set all agog to see the world and try its chances. Accordingly he again left his native village, this time not to return. For a while he lingered, teaching in Louth, and then, starting away again, reached Dublin with the proverbial half-crown in his pocket.”

[ Note: Yeats's introduction is curtailed at this point (omitting much of five paragraphs, and resumed on the basis of the biographical account supplied in the interim by D. J. O’Donoghue, in addition to information in Carleton’s “General Introduction” to the definitive 1843 edition of his works which alone was available to Yeats at the time of writing. ]

Thus far the story of his life is told by Mr. W. B. Yeats, in his Representative Irish Tales. Carleton was now in that darkest night which comes before the dawn. One anecdote of many may illustrate this period of his career. A bird-stuffer being in want of an assistant, young Carleton offered himself for the vacant post. He was asked what he proposed to stuff birds with, and his reply was “potatoes and meal.” At last he resolved to enlist; previously, however, after the manner of the English poet, Coleridge, addressing a letter in tolerably good Latin to the colonel of the regiment he purposed to join. From that gentleman he received a kind reply and a remittance; and soon after he managed to obtain some tutorships: while thus employed he met the lady who afterward became his wife.

After a hard struggle with poverty he met the Rev. Caesar Otway, then joint-editor of The Christian Examiner. Mr. Otway had recently written a work in which there was a description of Lough Derg. Carleton told him of his own pilgrimage to this same historic spot; and as he was detailing his adventures Mr. Otway suggested that he should commit them to paper. Carleton modestly promised to “try.” The sketch was written, approved, printed in The Christian Examiner, and at the end of two years he had contributed about thirty sketches to the same periodical; they were collected in a volume, and published under the title Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry. This was in 1830; in the course of three years the book had run through several editions. A second series appeared in 1833, and the next year came yet another volume entitled Tales of Ireland. Many of the tales contain glimpses of Carleton's own feelings and personal experience. In "The Hedge-school" he draws the schools and the teachers of his own boyhood; in “Denis O’Shaughnessy going to Maynooth” he describes himself, when he was still filled with the desire of becoming a priest; and in “The Poor Scholar” we have a description, partly of the adventures he had, partly of those he might have encountered, when his parents resolved to send him from home to be taught in the educated province. Many of the incidents in the story are conceived in the spirit of the truest pathos; and the happy ending to the sorrows of the [470] "Poor Scholar" and of his much-tried parents, can be read by few without their feelings being stirred to their deepest depths. A picture of the domestic and more tranquil feelings is given in "The Poor Scholar,” but the “Traits” are, besides, full of pictures of the darkest national passions. "Donagh, or the Horse-stealers,” presents a thrilling portrait of the effect of superstition on a criminal nature; "The Party Fight” portrays the fierce animosities which religious and political differences can excite among the ignorant; and in “The Lianhan-shee” there is a fine description of the struggle of a tortured and fanatic conscience.

Finally, there are stories in those first volumes of Carleton, in which he turns to lighter and more joyous scenes; and some of the tales are as fine specimens of the broadest farce as others are of the deepest pathos. "The Hedge-school” and "Denis O’Shaughnessy,” cannot be read without aching sides; and the story of “Phelim O’Toole's Courtship” is told with exhaustless humor. So far for the "Traits.” The chief story in the "Tales” is “The Dream of a Broken Heart”; which has been well described as “one of the purest and noblest stories in our literature.”.

Fardorougha the Miser, in 1839, met the demand for a regular tale; but this was the least of its merits. It is one of the most powerful and moving books ever written; indeed, its fault is that it harrows the feelings overmuch by its realistic pictures of scenes of tragic sorrow. There are two exquisite female portraits: Honor O’Donovan, the wife of the miser, and Una O’Brien, the betrothed of his son. Of the former character Carleton's own mother was the original. The story was dramatized by Miss Anne Jane Magrath, produced at Calvert's Theater, Abbey Street, Dublin, and ran for some time. Carleton, after this, returned to the shorter stories. In 1841 he published a series of tales, some humorous, some pathetic. The chief of the former was the sketch of “The Misfortunes of Barney Branagan,” and of the latter “The Dead Boxer.” In 1845 he again ventured on an extended work of fiction, Valentine M'Clutchy, the Irish Agent, or Chronicles of the Castle Cumber Property; there are several fine scenes of tragic interest, but the book has not the intensity or the uniform somberness of "The Miser.”

In Valentine M'Clutchy, too, unlike its predecessor, the more serious passages frequently alternate with scenes of laughter and moving comedy. In the following year his works received an addition of “The Pious Aspirations of Solomon M’Slime,” an attorney whose religion is that of Tartuffe. To this period also belongs "Rody the Rover, or the Ribbonman,” a description of the operations of the secret societies, which up to a recent period were so prominent a feature in the rural life of Ireland. In the year 1845, Duffy, the well-known Dublin publisher, was bringing out a series under the title of “The Library of Ireland.” The issue for a particular month was announced from the pen of Thomas Davis, and already sixteen pages of the story were in print. But before the tale could be completed the hand of the poet was forever still. There remained but six days to find another author and the story. Carleton came forward, and in less than the appointed time had produced “Paddy-Go-Easy,” a temperance tale said by Father Mathew to be the best in existence. [471]

The period chosen for the story The Black Prophet is that of the great famine, and the scenes in that appalling national calamity have never been more powerfully told. About this time also appeared The Emigrants of Ahadarra and Art Maguire, the last the story of the gradual degradation by drink of a man of good in- clinations and of originally pure nature. In 1849 was published The Tithe Proctor. In The Black Baronet, which first appeared in 1852 under the title The Red Hall, or the Baronet's Daughter, Carleton made the interest of his story depend more than in any of his previous works on intricacy of plot. The famine is again de- scribed, and there is a most touching picture of an evicted tenant, who, leaving the hut in which his wife lies dead and his children are down with the fever, goes out to seek subsistence by a life of crime. In 1852 Carleton published The Squanders of Castle Squander, a not very happy production; and in the same year "Jane Sinclair,” “Neal Malone,” and some other of his shorter tales were republished from the periodicals in which they had originally appeared. Willy Reilly and his Dear Coleen Bawn (1855) is in parts weak and rather sentimental; but there are several bright bits descriptive of Irish domestic life. In 1860 was published The Evil Eye, or the Black Specter, and in 1862 Redmond Count O’Hanlon, the Irish Rapparee. These were the last works of any considerable length which issued from his pen except his autobiography, which is one of the most remarkable human documents ever penned; it is included in Mr. D. J. O’Donoghue's life of William Carleton, published in 1896. He was not free from the embarrassments which attend the precarious profession of authorship, and on the representation of his numerous friends a pension of 200 ($1,000) a year was secured for him from the Government. His last illness was of some duration, and he passed away Jan. 30, 1869.

From the foregoing brief characterization of his books we can understand why, as Mr. George Barnett Smith very truly says: “Carleton has been regarded as the truest and most powerful, and the tenderest delineator of Irish life. Indignant at the constant misrepresentation of the character of his countrymen, he resolved to give a faithful picture of the Irish people, and although he did not spare their vices, he championed their virtues, which were too often neglected or disputed.”