Irish Jesuit Province

Twenty-Four Vagabond Tales by John GibbonsReview by: J. C. J.The Irish Monthly, Vol. 59, No. 700 (Oct., 1931), p. 657Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20513124 .

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BOOK RE VIE'WS 657

hiis sleepy eyes could see nothing more. He laid his little black helad on the floor, anrd' the loom sang its sleeping, song to Ihim:

Lurrat lozra on their pillow Soft winlds sleSep anTid dreiam-in;

Lurra lorra oIn the billow MX aidens' tresses gleam."1

BOOK REVIEWS.

Twenty-four Vagabond rPale.s By John ( ibbons. London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne. pp. 197. 5/-.

Johlnt (Gibbozlls, vagrabond thlough le be, and the; Prince of Vagabondis) has come to stay. It will generally be only for a niglht or two, because you will stay up all night in his comp,any and you will be off on the road with him in the

morning if you can. Now it is a tale or two or three, as here o-f Italy, Italy out of the way; theni to Portugal, to the out-oV-t-he-w,ay village, " where God wa1s dead," buit the donkey-man was not quite sture that Ile would not come back again and St. Anthony is very much alive; then to queer ulnh<.ard of Places in the Balkans, where you admire his language gyrations and meet St. Anthony again; a little side tri) to Finland and the one-pereenters whto turn out to be only one-thbousanders, yet waiting proudly for the re, tuirn of the King whlile they hold the fort; tlen to the trenches with his queer and fine Father A, so frail yet stronig; an uinconventional tale of L.ourdes; then here and there, the p)uzzling Father B. and divinely quixotic Father C.; and other tales. They are nrot pious tales but they are amazingly good and will do good in the queer way of the queer Padres who come in through them. I should like to tramp the road with Gibbons, though I should draw the line at the Four Nights third, where he learnt so much. It is no wonder that the series ends with the stay-at-homers and those monstrouis perpetual travelling untravellers. It would be an

impertinence to praise anything in particular, but there are passages you will read again and again. HIe is the king of shanachies; may he get a cead mille failthe in Ireland, whose faith and piety, for all his disclaimers of much of either, are his.

J. C. J.

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