24 JOURNAL OF THE COUNTY DONEGAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY. ----·· ·-----· ----- novel had become as much a part of local tradition as the actual facts upon which it was based. Carleton's. "Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn" and Balfe's Opera "Lily of Killarney" have played similar tricks with tradition in other parts of Ireland. One of the greatest American Editors of ·the nineteenth century, the Reverend Hugh Gallagher, was born in Killygordon in 1820, and was for a time Parish Priest of Pittsburg and editor of "The Pittsburg catholic." In 1850 he founded and left in a flourishing condition "The c:rusader of Cambria," and three years later set ofT on the road to success the widely read "Catholic Standard." He is ·also remembered as the founder of many sound Banking Institutions in the various parishes through which he passed up to his death, at San Francisco in 1882. Killygordon did not export all its literary talents, for its well remernbered village newsagent, Samuel Sieaton, wrote a Victorian novel entitled "Horan or the Stranger at Home," and James MacLaughlin, the 'I)Oet author of "The '.Romance of C'onn Tiimey's Bride" is s.till a smaff farmer at Tievebrack, and has been given every encouragement to bring out a larger edition of his narrative poems and ballads. William Gillespie of Sessiaghoneill is another poetic small farmer, and is the author of the wellknown ballad "Johnson's Motor car." I could weary some of you, or interest more of you with appreciations, anecdotes and details of my protogees, Jsaac Butt and his contemporary, Frances Browne, the 1blind poetess of Donegal. I have already published a comprehensive account of this great Orator and Lawyer of the nineteenth c"entury. If any of you wish to follow up my little tribute to Butt's memory, I can recommend De Vere White's recently nublished "The Road to Success." .which deals largely with Isaac Butt, the Lawyer and the Politician. Butt has written on a wide range of subjects for he was as equally at home in extoling the 'beauties of the classics as he was in lecturing on Zoology and the theories of wealth·and caipital which he squandered so prodigiously in nractice. r have traced some forty of his books and pamphlets and acquired a good proportion of them. Frances Browne was, until recently, almost forgotten in her native village of Stranorlar, and I can assure you that this eclipge was not due to lack of quality in her verse and prose. Her best prose work, "Granny's Wonderful Armchair and Its Tales of Fairy Times," was first published in 1857, and 1t has seen three editions in this century-its latest by Dents, of London, in 1940. None of her work reveals her terrible infirmity, and even her backgrounds are filled in with a firm and vigorous hand while her poems breathe an imagination born in her' native mountains. This concludes my survey of the geographical distribution of Anglo-Irish Literary ability and Anglo-[rish Literature in C:ounty Donegal. The survey is by no means exhaustive, for I have tried to refra.in from dwelling on or referring to many living authors, such as Stephen Gwynne or modern literature such as Maurice 1Walsh's "Blackcock's Feather" or Bodkin's "Halt Invader." Most ·of you should be more familiar than I with this phase of County Donegal in Anglo-Irish Literature. Before I conclude, however, I should like to say a few ·brief words on the historical and 'biographical literature of the county as we have quite a number of very interesting family histories. The latest of these is Miss Trenche's "The Wrays anrl nther Families of CQunty Oonega]" which I reviewed in many of the local papers, including the "Donegal Democrat." Side by side with it we have W. :Rl. Young's "Fighters of iDerry: Their Decrls and Descendants." which was nublished in 1932. The Hammons, the Harts, the Nesbitts and the Harveys each have had their family associations with County Donegal recorded in separate volumes. The finest work of this nature, however, is that very rare book "'nlree Hundred Years in Innishowen," by Mrs. Young of OuldafT. The Knox family is also well documented in a :pamphlet entitled Andrew Knox, Bishop of Raphoe, and.Some of His Descendants," which is now, unfortunately, out of print. The Gaelic families of county Donegal have had little to show in this respect uu to the present. We have Father Paul Walsh's pamphlets on the O'Olerys and the M'Sweeneys, and his article on the O'Gallaghers in the "Irish Book Lover." To find anything like a comprehensive account of the great O'Donn':'ll family we must recourse to a work tn Spanish, although they are well documented in Father Meehan's "Fate and Fortunes" and sympathetically port.raved by the novelists llke Standish O'Gradv and Mrs. Prender. County Donegal has insnired two of the greatest Gaelic family histories in print. They were both produced in America, the earlier being John P. Brown's ''The MacLaughlin's of Clan Owen," and thirty years later Miss Dunlevy Kelley wrote her "Annals of the Dunlevy 'Family," and published it with the Chaucer Press, Ohio. I can recommend this book to
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