(1798-1846) (1796-1874)
Of the writers who have won esteem by telling the pathetic stories of
their country's people, the names of John and Michael Banim are ranked
among the Irish Gael not lower than that of Sir Walter Scott among the
British Gael. The works of the Banim brothers continued the same sad and
fascinating story of the "mere Irish" which Maria Edgeworth and Lady
Morgan had laid to the hearts of English readers in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century days. The Banim family was one of those
which belonged to the class of "middlemen," people so designated in
Ireland who were neither rich nor poor, but in the fortunate mean. The
family home was in the historic town of Kilkenny, famous alike for its
fighting confederation and its fighting cats. Here Michael was born
August 5th, 1796, and John April 3d, 1798. Michael lived to a green old
age, and survived his younger brother John twenty-eight years, less
seventeen days; he died at Booterstown, August 30th, 1874.
[Illustration: JOHN BANIM]
The first stories of this brotherly collaboration in letters appeared in
1825 without mark of authorship, as recitals contributed for instruction
and amusement about the hearth-stone of an Irish household, called 'The
O'Hara Family.' The minor chords of the soft music of the Gaelic English
as it fell from the tongues of Irish lads and lasses, whether in note of
sorrow or of sport, had already begun to touch with winsome tenderness
the stolid Saxon hearts, when that idyl of their country's penal days,
'The Bit o' Writin',' was sent out from the O'Hara fireside. The almost
instantaneous success and popularity of their first stories speedily
broke down the anonymity of the Banims, and publishers became eager and
gain-giving. About two dozen stories were published before the death of
John, in 1842. The best-known of them, in addition to the one already
mentioned, are 'The Boyne Water,' 'The Croppy,' and 'Father Connell.'
The fact that during the long survival of Michael no more of the Banim
stories appeared, is sometimes called in as evidence that the latter had
little to do with the writing of the series. Michael and John, it was
well known, had worked lovingly together, and Michael claimed a part in
thirteen of the tales, without excluding his brother from joint
authorship. Exactly what each wrote of the joint productions has never
been known. A single dramatic work of the Banim brothers has attained to
a position in the standard drama, the play of 'Damon and Pythias,' a
free adaptation from an Italian original, written by John Banim at the
instance of Richard Lalor Shiel. The songs are also attributed to John.
It is but just to say that the great emigration to the United States
which absorbed the Irish during the '40's and '50's depreciated the sale
of such works as those of the Banims to the lowest point, and Michael
had good reason, aside from the loss of his brother's aid, to lay down
his pen. The audience of the Irish story-teller had gone away across the
great western sea. There was nothing to do but sit by the lonesome
hearth and await one's own to-morrow for the voyage of the greater sea.