Robert Dwyer Joyce, M.D. / James J. Walsh.

  • James Joseph Walsh
Date:
[1900]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Robert Dwyer Joyce, M.D. / James J. Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    His next book followed nearly the same lines as its predecessor and bore the title “ Irish Fireside Tales.” It was published by Patrick Donohue in Boston in 1871. Joyce himself confesses in the preface that they were only imitations of the old Irish Shanachies,—the stories told by the old wandering Irish story-tellers, so many of which have proved in the Gaelic revival to be of the greatest possible value in helping in the restoration of Irish myths and traditions as well as in preserving the Gaelic tongue. Always in prose or verse it was his beloved Ireland, her legends and traditions that he dwelt on. As he sang later on in life: “ Though many a field I’ve searched of foreign lore And found great themes for song, yet ne’er would I Seek Greece, or Araby, or Persia’s shore For heroes and the deeds of days gone by; To my own native land my heart would fly, Howe’er my fancy wandered, and I gave My thoughts to her and to the heroes high She nursed in ages gone, and strove to save Some memory of their deeds from dark oblivion’s wave.” Joyce’s real triumph as a literary man did not come, however, until the publication of “ Deirdre, an Irish Epic,” which appeared, as we have said, as the second in the No Na7ne Series, then being issued by Roberts Brothers in Boston. We have already said that it created quite a furore in Boston; but that it attracted almost as much attention, from literary folk at least, outside of New England can be appreciated from the fact that the New York Times, then, as now, a good guide to the literary interests of the time, gave “Deirdre” a three-column re- view, from which we extract the following passages as illustrative of the opinions expressed by literary critics throughout the country generally: