In presenting the following “ Traits and Stories” to the Public, the Author can with confidence as- sure them, that what he offers is, both in manu- facture and material, genuine Irish ; yes, genuine Irish as to character—drawn by one born amidst the scenes he describes—reared as one of the peo- ple whose characters and situations he sketches— and who can cut and dress a shillaly as well as any man in his Majesty’s dominions ; ay, and use it too : so let the critics take care of themselves. Conversant with the pastimes, festivals, feasts, and feuds he details —he may well say of what he has described —“quorum pars magna fui.” Moreover, the Author assumes, that in the ground he has taken, he stands in a great measure without a competitor;  particularly as to certain sketches, peculiar [v], in the habits and manners delineated in them, to the Northern Irish.   These last at Creachts—as they were formerly called—are as characteristically distinct from the Southern or Western Milesians, ‘as the people of Yorkshire are from the natives of Somerset; yet they are still as Irish, and as strongly imbued with the cha- racter of their country. The English reader, perhaps, may be sceptical as to the deep hatred which prevails among Roman Catholics in the north of Ireland, against those who differ from them in party and religious principles ; but when he reflects that they were driven before the face of the Scotch invader, and divested by the Settlement of Ulster of their pleasant vales, forced to quench their fires on their fathers’ hearths, and retire to the mountain ranges of Tyrone, Donegal, and Derry, per- haps he will grant, after all, that the feeling is na- tural to 'a people treated as they have been. Upon this race, surrounded by Scotch and English set- tlers, and hid amongst the mists of their highland retreats, education, until recently, had made little —the Ulster progress ;—superstition, and prejudice, and ancient animosity, held their strongest sway ; and the Priests, the poor pastors of a poorer people, were devoid of the wealth, the self-respect, and the learning, which prevailed amongst their better endowed brethren of the South.

[vii] The Author, in the different scenes and characters he describes, has endeavoured to give his por- traits as true to nature as possible; and requests his readers to give him credit when he asserts* that without party, object, or engagement, he dis- claims subserviency to any political purpose what- soever. His desire is neither to distort his coun- trymen into demons, nor to enshrine them as suffering innocents and saints as they really are—warm-hearted, hot-headed, af- —but to exhibit them the world for the poet or romance writer—capable of great culpability, and of great and energetic goodness—sudden in their passions as the red and rapid gush of their mountain-streams—variable in their temper as the climate that sends them the fectionate creatures — the very fittest materials in mutability of sun and shower— at times, rugged and gloomy as the moorland sides of their mountains — ofltener sweet, soft, and gay, as the sun-lit meadows of their pleasant vales.

The Author—though sometimes forced to touch upon their vices, expose their errors, and laugh at their superstitions, —loves also (and it has formed, as he may say, the pleasure of his pen) to call up their happier qualities, and exhibit them as can- did, affectionate, and faithful. Nor has he ever foregone the hope—his heart’s desire and his anxious wish—that his own dear, native mountain [viii] people may, through the influence of education, by the leadings of purer knowledge, and by the fosterings of a paternal government, become the pride, the strength, and support of the British empire, instead of, as now, forming its weakness and its reproach.

The reader may finally believe that these volumes contain probably a greater number of facts than any other book ever published on Irish life. The Author’s acquaintance with the people was so intimate and extensive, and the state of Ireland so unsettled, that he had only to take incidents which occurred under his eye, and by fictitious names and localities, exhibit through their medium, the very prejudices and manners which produced the incidents themselves.

In the language and expressions of the northern peasantry he has studiously avoided local idiom, and that intolerable Scoto-Hibernic jargon which pierces the ear so unmercifully;  but he has preserved every thing Irish,  and generalized  the phraseology, so that the book, wherever it may go, will exhibit a truly Hibernian spirit.

In the beginning of the first volume there will be remarked a greater portion of the Doric than perhaps will be relished;  the Author, however, by the advice of a judicious friend, has changed this ere more than a few pages were printed, and made [xx] his  characters—without being less  idiomatic speak less broadly.

It depends on the patronage which the Public may bestow on these volumes, whether other attempts, made under circumstances less discouraging, and for which there are ample materials, calculated to exhibit Irish life in a manner, perhaps, more practically useful, shall be proceeded with.

Dublin,
Ist March,
1830