Irish Wonders

The ghosts, giants, pookas, banshees and leprechauns of Ireland as the country people told them to an American traveller in the 1880s-the fairy hunt, the headless coach, the changeling, the man who danced with the good people. McAnally gathered these on the roads of Munster and Connacht and wrote down the tellers' own words and their asides. What makes it unusual is the humour: his informants are never solemn about what they plainly believe. Ten paintings from 1813 to 1897 by artists including Walter Osborne and Joseph Malachy Kavanagh show the Irish countryside these stories belong to, from estuary evenings to cottage interiors, alongside fifty restored and coloured illustrations.