CROKER, Thomas Crofton. Researches in the South of Ireland. Illustrative of the Scenery, Architectural Remains and the Manners and Superstitions of the Peasantry with an Appendix containing a Private Narrative of the Rebellion of 1798.

Illustrated with fourteen lithographs, from drawings by Alfred Nicholson and Miss Marianne Nicholson. London: John Murray, 1824. Quarto. First edition. pp. vi, 393, 17 (plates), + errata. Original quarter maroon cloth on grey board, titled in gilt. Ex lib with labels and stamps. Usual foxing to plates. A good copy.
NSTC 2C43668.
A pioneering work in Irish folklore for, unlike his contemporaries, Crofton Croker recognised that the realities of Irish rural life were equally as important as the old tombstones, decaying castles, and other features of the Irish countryside. Croker in the advertisement tells us: “The pretensions of this little volume are very humble, as it consists of little more than an arrangement of notes made during several excursions in the South of Ireland between the years 1812 and 1822”. Remarkable well-informed, particularly on history and antiquities, but with considerable discussion of folklore, including fairies and funeral customs. In his chapter dealing with the funeral customs, he mentions the peoples’ fear of the banshee: “A curious spirit, and one I believe peculiar to Ireland, is the banshee ... a small, shrivelled old woman with long white hair, supposed to be peculiarly attached to old houses of families, and to announce the approaching dissolution of any members by mournful lamentations. This fairy attendant is considered as highly honourable.”
Dedicated to Alfred Nicholson and his daughter Marianne whom Croker married in 1830.
For the students of ‘1798’ history there is by way of appendix, an eye-witness narrative of the Rebellion in Wexford by Jane Adams.

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