Wildgoose Lodge and Other Stories

In this, the first of an eight volume series of William Carleton's Traits and Stories we are given four works which display his genius in all its versatility and variety. In The Lough Derg Pilgrim he recalls his adventures at Lough Derg when, as a future candidate for holy orders, he first made that famous pilgrimage.Ned M'Keown, the one totally comic tale of the four, immortalizes in seemingly artless dialogue the travails of Irish marriage and the consolation offered by the visitations of mysterious strangers to the hearth.In The Lianhan Shee and Wildgoose Lodge the tone becomes progressively darker, shading perceptibly from ironic observation to tragic participation. In the first of these Carleton holds a mirror up to the Irish nature, reflecting in this tale the deeply superstitious Mary O'Sullivan and her confrontation with the tormented figure alienated from church and community, the Lianhan Shee. In Wildgoose Lodge, Carleton gives an intensely moving account of another aspect of Irish life and tells a nightmare tale, very much in the manner of Poe.