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INTRODUCTION

"My Irish Year" is not representative of the whole of Ireland: Catholic and Peasant Ireland only is shown, and this Catholic and Peasant Ireland is localised in a strip of country crossing the Midlands to the West. There is nothing of historic Munster in these pages; nothing of East and South Leinster; nothing of Ulster—neither of the Ulster of the Presbyterian farmers so ably described in Mr Robert Lynd's "Home Life in Ireland," nor the wider Ulster that is Catholic and Gaelic. The cities, Dublin, Belfast, and Cork, each with its distinctive life and atmosphere, have not been brought into the book.

Within the locality described the author has been too much inclined, perhaps, to view the life in its agrarian aspect. The current set up by the Gaelic League, affecting the revival of language, music, dances, and games, has not been given due apprecia tion, and the life—or rather the form of decay—that

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