Author’s Foreword to _Iosagán agus Sgealta eile_, which is here
translated by Mr. Joseph Campbell:
Putting these stories in order, it is no wonder that my thoughts are
on the friends that told them to me, and on the lonely place on the
edge of Ireland where they live. I see before my eyes a countryside,
hilly, crossed with glens, full of rivers, brimming with lakes; great
horns threatening their tops on the verge of the sky in the
north-west; a narrow, moaning bay stretching in from the sea on each
side of a “ross;” the “ross” rising up from the round of the bay, but
with no height compared with the nigh-hand hills or the horns far off;
a little cluster of houses in each little glen and mountain gap, and a
solitary cabin here and there on the shoulder of the hills. I think I
hear the ground-bass of the waterfalls and rivers, the sweet cry of
the golden plover and curlew, and the low voice of the people in talk
by the fireside.... My blessing with you little book, to Rossnageeragh
and to them in it, my friends!
It is from the “_patairidhe beaga_,” the “little soft young things”
that Old Matthias used see making sport to themselves on the green
that I heard the greater part of the first story. They do be there
always, every sunny evening and every fine Sunday morning, running and
throwing leaps exactly as they would be when Old Matthias would sit
looking on them. I never saw Iosagan among them, but it’s like He does
be there, for all that. Isn’t His wish to be rejoicing on the earth,
and isn’t His delight to be along with His Father’s children?... I
have told in the story itself the place and the time I heard THE
PRIEST. It’s well I remember Nora’s little house, and the kindly
little woman herself, and the three children. Paraig is serving Mass
now, and I hear Taimeen has “_Fromsó Framsó_,” by heart.... It was
from Brideen herself that I heard the adventures of Barbara. One
evening that we went in on Oilean ni Raithnighe (the Ferny Island), I
and she, it was she told it to me, and we sitting on the brink of the
lake looking over on the Big Rock. She showed me Barbara’s grave the
same evening after our coming home, and she took a promise from me
that I’d say a prayer for her friend’s soul every night of my life.
Brideen will be going to school next year, and she will be able to
read the story of Barbara out of this, I hope she will like it.... As
for EOINEEN OF THE BIRDS, I don’t know who it was I heard it from,
unless it was from the swallows themselves. Yes, I think it was they
told it to me one evening that I was stretched in the heather looking
at them flying here and there over Loch Eireamhlach. From what mouth
the swallows heard the start of the story, I don’t know. From the
song-thrush and from that yellow-bunting that have their nests in a
ditch of the garden, it’s like.
To you, sweet friends, people of the telling of my stories, both
little and big, I give and dedicate this little book.