Stories and Tales of the Irish
9781465562692
pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
TO THE SECOND EDITION. I am agreeably called upon by my bookseller to prepare for a Second Edition of Willy Reilly. This is at all times a pleasing call upon an author; and it is so especially to me, inasmuch as the first Edition was sold at the fashionable, but unreasonable, price of a guinea and a half—a price which, in this age of cheap literature, is almost fatal to the sale of any three-volume novel, no matter what may be its merits. With respect to Willy Reilly, it may be necessary to say that I never wrote any work of the same extent in so short a time, or with so much haste. Its popularity, however, has been equal to that of any other of my productions; and the reception which it has experienced from the ablest public and professional critics of the day has far surpassed my expectations. I accordingly take this opportunity of thanking them most sincerely for the favorable verdict which they have generously passed upon it, as I do for their kindness to my humble efforts for the last twenty-eight years. Nothing, indeed, can be a greater encouragement to a literary man, to a novel writer, in fact, than the reflection that he has an honest and generous tribunal to encounter. If he be a quack or an impostor, they will at once detect him; but if he exhibit human nature and truthful character in his pages, it matters not whether he goes to his bookseller’s in a coach, or plods there humbly, and on foot; they will forget everything but the value and merit of what he places before them. On this account it is that I reverence and respect them; and indeed I ought to do so, for I owe them the gratitude of a pretty long literary life. Concerning this Edition, I must say something. I have already stated that it was written rapidly and in a hurry. On reading it over for correction, I was struck in my cooler moments by many defects in it, which were, kindly overlooked, or, perhaps, not noticed at all. To myself, however, who had been brooding over this work for a long time, they at once became obvious. I have accordingly added an underplot of affection between Fergus Reilly—mentioned as a distant relative of my hero—and the Cooleen Bawn’s maid, Ellen Connor. In doing so, I have not disturbed a single incident in the work; and the reader who may have perused the first Edition, if he should ever—as is not unfrequently the case—peruse this second one, will certainly wonder how the additions were made. That, however, is the secret of the author, with which they have nothing to do but to enjoy the book, if they can enjoy it. With respect to the O'Reilly name and family, I have consulted my distinguished' friend—and I am proud to call him so—John O'Donovan, Esq., LL.D., M.R.I.A., who, with the greatest kindness, placed the summary of the history of that celebrated family at my disposal. This learned gentleman is an authority beyond all question. With respect to Ireland—her language—her old laws—her history—her antiquities—her archaeology—her topography, and the genealogy of her families, he is a perfect miracle, as is his distinguished fellow-laborer in the same field, Eugene Curry. Two such men—and, including Dr. Petrie, three such men—Ireland never has produced, and never can again—for this simple reason, that they will have left nothing after them for their successors to accomplish. To Eugene Curry I am indebted for the principal fact upon which my novel of the Tithe Proctor was written—the able to which was printed verbatim from a manuscript with which he kindly furnished me. The following is Dr. O'Donovan’s clear and succinct history of the O'Reilly family from the year 435 until the present time: The ancestors of the family of O'Reilly had been celebrated in Irish history long before the establishment of surnames in Ireland. In the year 435 their ancestor, Duach Galach, King of Connaught, was baptized by St. Patrick on the banks of Loch Scola, and they had remained Christians of the old Irish Church, which appears to have been peculiar in its mode of tonsure, and of keeping Easter (and, since the twelfth century, firm adherents to the religion of the Pope, till Dowell O'Reilly, Esq., the father of the present head of the name, quarrelling with Father Dowling, of Stradbally, turned Protestant, about the year 1800
