IN A QUIET LAND

A memory-misted recollection of a childhood in Ireland is unspoiled- by time and change- and in its simplicity of images and incidents recaptures a special world and way of life. Here in the thatched farmhouse which had the ""homely comfort"" of a bird's nest, he grew up as one of many children- and in the company of his grandmother, his father and mother, and the many pookies and boody-men who joined them at dusk. There were the rude changes of school- and after school tormentors; the sorrow- and excitement- of the death of his grandmother; the hours spent farming (a life to which he was unsuited from the start) and ""skinning the bog""; the yearly visit of the Priest- and the occasional tramps and tinkers who passed their way; this all fills in an ingenuous, indigenous, record remembered with particular charm. Sean O'Faolain adds an appreciative foreword.