By The Barrow River
AND OTHER STORIES

Edmund Leamy was the beau-ideal of a chivalrous Irishgentleman, patriot, and Christian. During a friendshipextending over many years, I never knew him fall short inthe slightest particular of the faith I had in him. Hisnature was poetic and romantic in the highest degree.Through sunny and cloudy day alike he was Ireland’s man,and his faith in her ultimate destiny was never shaken. Ihave never known a nature more lofty or more lovable.Long years of weak health and suffering, under whichmost people would have sunk, could not alter his noblenature. He kept his great, loving, true heart to the last.Even if things were sad enough for him, it was happiness ifthey were well with friends and neighbours. He did notknow what it was to have a grudging thought. Theexperiences which usually make middle-age a period ofdisillusionment came to him as to other men, yet he was neverdisillusioned; he had the heart of an innocent and trustingboy till the day he died. To be sure there was one by hishearth who helped to keep his illusions fresh; and his burdenof ill-health was lightened for him by God’s mercy throughthe same bright and devoted companionship. He wasIreland’s man; all he did was for Ireland. He could not[vi]have written a line of verse or prose for the English public,however sure he might be of its suffrage and reward. Hewrote a great deal for Ireland, and although, I believe, hereached his highest development as an orator, an orator,alas, sorely hampered by physical weakness, yet his storiesand his poems have so much of the personality of the man,the fresh, honest, and sweet personality, that it has beenthought well to rescue just a handful from his many writingsin Irish journals extending over a number of years. Hehad not the leisure to make himself exclusively a literaryman. He was always in the thick of the fight; it wouldhave broken his heart to be otherwise. But the work hehas left, especially his fairy tales and dramatic stories, withtheir wealth of colour and their imaginativeness, give someearnest of the work he might have done. His book ofIrish Fairy Tales, which has long been out of print, has beenrepublished in a worthy form; and I am sure the presentvolume, which shows his fancy in a different vein, whichcontains a set of stories that have not been brought togetherbefore, will also be welcome to his countrymen. Were I towrite his epitaph it would be—“He

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