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The Capuchin Annual
The Capuchin Annual, 1946-7.
Published at Church street, Dublin.
10s. 6d. net.
Once again Father Senan, O.F.M.Cap., has organised and edited (the organising of this 600-page volume must have been just as great a job as the editing) an excellent annual. The principal feature this year is a series of tributes to the late Count John McCormack by 25 friends or admirers of the singer, and a collection of photographs of the McCormack family and of incidents in the career of the Count. First-class photographs, well printed on good quality paper, and a number of colour plates of Irish saints, by Richard J. King, make the volume as interesting on the pictorial side as it is from the letterpress aspect. Merely to leaf through the book, reading the headings and the picture captions, is an hour's work.
The contents are both gay and serious. The underlying note is both religious and nationalistic, so that the annual is bound to give many evenings of pleasant reading to the members of all ages of almost any Irish Catholic family. To a printer or journalist the principal impression that it leaves is of skilful production. While the opening article, by Sean Moylan, T.D., on "Irish America," is by no means the best in the book, the interest of the reader is aroused and maintained throughout the 600 pages.
A large number of the first and final pages are taken up with advertisements, but these, too, will be read; for, very clearly, a series of amusing drawings by Father Gerald of Capuchins at work and play runs through the early advertising pages, while those at the end of the book are brightened by photographs and biographies of the contributors.

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JOYTINGS
By M.A.T.
Change For THERE are lots of things that we have to complain about these days, but there is one thing that can be said to give great satisfaction—to my mind, at any rate—and that is the quality of the book production in Ireland. There was a time, and not so long ago, when the books turned out by Irish firms were badly printed on poor paper and covered with poor taste and poorer material; they looked shoddy things indeed when placed beside work standing in the name of any of the well-known London houses. But now I think it can be said that the paper and printing and the binding and general format of books made in Ireland can stand comparison with those produced in any other country. I am thinking especially of the books of The Three Candles, Browne and Nolan, the Talbot Press, Gill, and the Kerryman, Tralee, but there are other firms as well whose work is deserving of the highest praise.
* * *
An Annual Of IN the case of periodical publications, we have still, I think, a good deal to learn from countries with a longer tradition in this line than we have; but I make a very honourable exception in the case of one, an annual now in its seventeenth year. The current issue of "The Capuchin Annual" lies before me in its familiar Franciscan brown cover. Within lies a feast of good reading and a multitude of beautifully reproduced illustrations, some of them in colour. Father Senan, the Editor—surely Father Senan must be one of the best-known priests in Ireland?—has gathered his contributors from far and wide, from England, Scotland, Australia and America as well as from Ireland. I must not start to name all the authors whose work is represented, for my space would simply be devoured by the lengthy list of distinguished writers. But I can refer briefly to some of the prominent features of the volume.
Memorial To EACH year, Father Senan selects a leading subject, one that shall take pride of place both in reading material and in photographic illustration. This year it is the life and art of John McCormack. The pictures begin with the house in which our great tenor was born and end with the singing of the Benedictus over his grave by the Palestrina Choir of the Pro-Cathedral. In between we see him at the various stages of his career from youth to greatness. These are pictures that everyone who admired the singing and knew the lovable personality of the Count will want to possess. The articles that go with them, tributes from many hands at home and over the seas, show how deeply his singing impressed the sensitive and the cultivated as well as those whose tastes go no further than homely and simple ballads. "The wide world mourns the sweetest singer of his time," wrote Compton Mackenzie; "there is no one to take his place," wrote Ernest Newman.
* * *
John Hogan THE Annual And Others runs to nearly 600 pages, and caters for a wide variety of tastes. I was glad to find an authoritative article on the work of John Hogan, one of the two great sculptors that Ireland produced in the nineteenth century—John Henry Foley was the other—and a fine set of photographs to illustrate it. Mr. C. P. Curran, whose knowledge and insight in the sphere of the visual arts are evident in all he writes, gives a balanced estimate of this great artist. There are contributions in lighter vein by the irrepressible John Desmond Sheridan and the witty Mervyn Wall and others. Poetry has its place, too, and the rural scene comes in for its due share of attention. I liked the little black-and-white sketches of Capuchins that serve as end-pieces—especially the ones of Father Senan himself conducting a choir of birds, and of his co-editor, Father Gerald, enjoying a read while the garden is watered by means of a Heath Robinson contraption!
The Annual is published by the Capuchin Fathers, Church St., price
* * *

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Under the Patronage of
His Eminence, Francis Cardinal Spellman
Archbishop of New York
LITURGICAL ARTS SOCIETY, INC.
7 East 42nd Street
New York 17, N. Y.
MURRAY HILL 2-3915
Otto L. Spaeth, President
Lauren Ford, Vice-President
Maurice Lavanoux, Secretary
The Reverend John LaFarge, S.J., Chaplain
Max H. Foley, Treasurer
John M. Dooley, Assistant Secretary
February 5, 1947
Dear Father Senan:
I have just received the Capuchin Annual for 1946-47 and it certainly lives up to its past reputation. We have nothing like it in the United States. I will either write a short review or perhaps even an editorial about it in the May issue of our quarterly, Liturgical Arts. I wonder whether you would allow us to use some of the illustrations in the book; particularly the fine drawings of saints and also the very clever and amusing black and white sketches that are scattered throughout the book.
With every good wish and kindest regards, I remain
Very sincerely yours,
Secretary
P. S. I was delighted to read the illustrated article "Soliloques of a Solitary" by Fra Jerome of Cat Island in the Bahamas. I have corresponded with Fra Jerome on and off for the past seven or eight years and it is my hope that I may see him in the Bahamas within the next year.
The Reverend Senan, O.F.M.Cap.
The Capuchin Annual
Church Street
Dublin, Eire
ML:CCM

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Capuchin
Press
Annual 13
67
THE CAPUCHIN ANNUAL, 1946-47.
10/6,
AS with every issue of this celebrated Annual, one looks at the pictures first. There are hundreds of them and they are magnificently produced. Pride of place must be given to the John McCormack gallery, which tells the life-story of the famous Irish tenor almost from the cradle to the grave. The tributes that accompany it come from many pens, including those of Madame Caruso, Mr. Compton Mackenzie, Lady Ravensdale, Dr. Larchet, Mr. D. L. Kelleher, Lady Yarrow, Mrs. Frank Aiken, Mr. Ernest Newman and Sir Shane Leslie.
One turns next to Mr. Aodh de Blacam's re-telling of a great story—O'Sullivan Beare's last stand and his fighting retreat from Glengariff to the sheltering walls of O'Rourke's Castle in Brefini. It is one of the epic happenings in our history and some day an Irish film producer will discover its immense possibilities for the screen. Mr. de Blacam's dramatic narrative is illustrated by a map and some splendid photographs. It cries out for republication in pamphlet form.
To comment, however, briefly, on all the other good things in the Annual would be impossible. There are five hundred pages of them and there is hardly one which can be passed over lightly. But room must be found to mention Mr. C. P. Curran's illuminating article on John Hogan—accompanied by fine illustrations of the sculptor's work; Mr. Seán Moylan's "Irish America"; Séamus de Faoite's charming one-act play, "Brendan's Well"; Benedict Kiely's "The House at Derrynane" (which, it is to be hoped, will not suffer the same fate as the House at Coole); Dr. Percy Jones's "The Irish Ballad in Exile," and Monsignor John O'Connor's "Annals of the Poor."
When one has said that this number of the Capuchin Annual lives up fully to the high standard set by its predecessors there is little that need be added.
J. C.

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Fine Prose and Vivid Picture in the
29.3.47
IRISH WEEKLY
Breft
Capuchin Annual
THERE are very few Annuals that give the same kind of pleasure as the Capuchin Annual. One opens it each year with the same eager expectation, and one is never disappointed or surprised at the unquestionable brilliance with which Father Senan, the editor, brings about his always delightful marriage of fine prose and vivid picture.
One of Father Senan's greatest feats is the ability with which he compiles his contents to interest a variety of readers. Undoubtedly the pictures are always thrilling; but we are never unaware of the
The Annual has given us a treasury of memories of John McCormack for which many will be grateful.
A bare articulation of the rest of the Annual's contents is futile. One can only list one's own preferences. For instance: Aodh de Blacam's story of O'Sullivan Beare's last stand and his retreat from Glengariff to O'Rourke's Castle at Brefini, a superb story superbly told; Sean Moylan's essay
John McCormack (accompanied by Gerald Moore at the piano), recording one of his famous songs for H.M.V.
good things to read, as our eye takes in the beauty so lavishly illustrated.
"This year a considerable portion of the picture content is devoted to John McCormack, telling his life story from his schooldays until his death. With the pictures go tributes in the form of a symposium, from a variety of people. Most of them say the same thing; some in a different way; but all help to re-create for us the personality of Ireland's greatest tenor. Life was irredeemably impoverished when John McCormack ceased to sing. We, too, who remember his opera and lieder singing, remember more acutely John McCormack, the born minstrel, the singer of homely songs which made a whole world kin- and a world of Irishmen at that!
on the Irish in America; Seamus de Faoite's charming one-act play, "Brendan's Well"; "The House at Derrynane," by Benedict Kiely; Cathal O'Byrne telling in his own inimitable way a story of the past, when Eoger Casement "ceilidhed" at Ard Righ, under storied Ben Madigan—an evocative picture; "Growing Up in Dublin," by John Desmond Sheridan; the story of John Hogan, the sculptor, by C. P. Curran, and of Michael Healy, the stained-glass artist, by P. H. Glendon.
Add to all this Fr. Gerald's witty drawings and Richard King's immaculate paintings in full colour of five Irish saints, and you have an Annual that is not only a monument of good editorship, but brilliant entertainment.
T. O'K.

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4 Jan '46
44. OAKLEY ROAD.
RANELAGH.
DUBLIN.
Very many thousands prosplended annual
It is beautifully produced and 4 ann
toothing forward to reading it through and
will give a novel in America
It has been very old - cervous trouble
in his ear so please reg. a little forger
fear. and do please receive card as I am
resting out to churchloron
All my best wishes to Mrs Fear Kalleen @B-

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CAPUCHIN ANNUAL 1946-47
A REVIEW BY THOMAS FOX
THE Capuchin Annual, now in its seventeenth year of publication, has been about seventy of those years a reviewer's problem. Unlike most things in the modern world the quantity of the Annual has increased without any decrease in quality and today it confronts the reviewer with more than five hundred pages of text and pictures, all of a very high merit, all deserving mention so much that a review runs the risk of becoming an annotated list of contents. The only possible solution for that difficulty is the arbitrary exercise of personal choice, followed up with the advice that the public should go and buy and read for itself.
In the current Annual, dated 1946-7, the most of the public and even most reviewers would agree in giving preference to the seventy-five page centrepiece: John McCormack, Irish Symposium of tributes. This was something that needed doing, and here it has been done excellently. About fifty illustrations, most of them full-page, follow the course of the life of the great singer. The symposium of the tributes is written by Mrs Frank Aiken, Madame down plain for all to read in this excellent symposium.
Mr Aodh de Blacam's article O'Sullivan Bere: the story of the fight for the southern ports and the great retreat, complete with excellent pictures by Mr. T. J. Molloy—whose camera work is once again an admirable feature of the Annual—fills more than sixty pages. And if the Annual existed only to make possible the publication of such filled its purpose. The amply fulfilled its purpose. The broken march of Donal Cam from broken Dunboy to refuge in Leitrim strikes the imagination as one of the world's great heroic stories, and to the Irishman the name Donal Cam means more than Marathon. Mr de Blacam follows the course of the march with scholarly exactness, and carefully builds up the Irish and European march around against which that march translates place.
What Mr de Blacam has done for a stormy period in the sixteenth century Mr C. P. Curran has done for the history of art in nineteenth century Ireland in his article: Concerning John Hogan. This article is of absorbing interest, and not only to students of the history of art. I am not myself a student of the article has been but now that this history of the art
Caruso, Mrs Moira O'Scannlain, the Baroness Ravensdale, Eleanor Lady Yarness, Captain Michael Bowles, Dr Edward P. Carey, Father Gerald, O.F.M.CAP.; D. L. Kelleher, Dr John F. Larchet, Sir Shane Lysley, MacEwan, Thomas MacGreevy, Compton Mackenzie, Herbert Louis Moiselle, Gerald Moore, Ernest Newman, Dr Vincent O'Brien, Michael O'Higgins, Monsignor Arthur H. Ryan, Edwin Schneider, Monsignor Fulton J. Schneider, L. A. G. Strong, and 'W.T.'
Looking down that list of names the first quick thought that strikes me is all admiration for the editorial enterprise that persuaded so on the same subject. But reading through the symposium I realise how much that editorial enterprise was aided by the fact that John McCormack was something more than a great singer. He was a great friend. People met him and remembered him as much on his own personal account as because of that voice. Those who were lucky enough to meet him again knew that he had really become a part, and a very big part, of their lives. So much is written
written I consider that any man who has not read it will not completely understand that very interesting period in which Hogan lived and worked. Fifteen full-page reproductions illustrate the work of the sculptor—to be exact one of the fifteen is a reproduction of Bernard Mulrenin's portrait of Hogan; and a further commentary by Mr Thomas MacGreevy, our best art critic, in an article: Some statues by John Hogan.
To avoid giving the impression that the Annual is only for the scholarly I turn to some of the creative writing which it contains. The poets include Pearse Hutchinson and Myles O'Farrell—two young and very promising—two well known to readers of the Annual—Padraic Gregory and Seamus de Hawkie's and 'Brendan's Well is filled with the vitality and perfection of phrase that characterise everything he has written; and in it, too, he captures a high spiritual significance when he writes like this: 'It doesn't matter what a man is so long as he is a good man. And I think myself, that if I couldn't be a sailor, I'd like to be a juggler, roaming the roads of the world,
listening every day to the circus band, and every day making hundreds and hundreds of children happy.'
Fitly enough in these times the first article in the Annual is called Irish America and the author is the Minister for Lands, Mr Sean Moylan. Here is a significant passage: 'The proximity of these two islands here in the northern seas, their close, long and rugged association, a literature which has been for centuries common to both, has given to our people a reasonably clear knowledge of the development of England's history, mind and personality. But because of distance, because of 'the paper wall', because of outside control and influence, our knowledge of America and the country of our race in that great state of intuitive rather than factual; emotional rather than intellectual. Nowadays with America only a few hours distant it is wise for us to discover for ourselves a clearer knowledge of it; to discover for ourselves the unknown country that lies behind the silver screen of Hollywood; to trace through the fabric of that nation the thread of Irish character and outlook; to realise that American merely to Puritan England, but
is rooted in every rifted rock of our mountains and has drawn its sustenance from the fertile valleys of our every province.'
'An Aircraidheach Rodach' in a reminiscent sketch I wonder, remembers some people, reflects on his memories, and sets the reader wondering on the mysterious variety in human lives.
Father Canice Mooney, O.F.M., a scholar learned in the Gaelic past and in the strong links that bound that past to the glory of Spain translates a Basque legend that has interestingly its counterpart in our own folklore. Edward A. Harring, an American Catholic journalist, writes of the sinking of the ship Lady Elgin eighty years ago in Lake Michigan. Patrick Tobin's sketch Twas Christmas eve at midnight recaptures the golden experience of the boy who carried the vestment of the basket for the priest in quiet mountainy country.
During his recent visit to the country of his birth the Archbishop of Delhi-Simla, the Most Relieved S. P. Mulligan, O.F.M. CAP., delivered a very topical lecture on the Catholic Missions in India. It was a good thought to preserve that lecture by reprinting it in the pages of the Annual.
In September, 1946, Michael
O'Higgins sang splendidly at a Carl Hardebeck Fund Concert in the Capitol, Dublin, before setting out on his tour of the United States. A good selection of newspaper clippings and photographs preserve the memory of that remarkable concert.
I have already mentioned Thomas MacGreevy for his article on some of Hogan's statues. That versatile, much-travelled, widely read and genuinely cultured Kerryman writes also in the Annual about the beauties of Donegal, and every Donegalman has read to be gratified. In yet another article he writes one of the finest essays it has been my pleasure to read from his pen, on Saint Brendan's Cathedral in Loughrea.
Cathal O'Byrne, whose recently-published book: As I roved out, has established him forever as a gentle whimsical essayist with wide historical and antiquarian interests, writes on Roger Casement; and there is a second article on 'that most gallant gentleman' by P. C. O'Mahony. The author, has with all the reticence of a solitary, preserved his anonymity—but his meditations in solitude have solid value. John D. Sheridan, who leads no introduction to all who need

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"FINDRUM"
179 RATHGAR ROAD,
DUBLIN.
A Aitair Oirisioneac Bill,
I don't think I've ever got such a fine Christmas present as those you sent me. To raise mile mile mysic again, & again to Aitair Teafoult. Both for the incredibly handsome reward of my "pomes", and for the "Annual" - better this year, even, than last. Nor should I forget the lovely Cuala card, with Kenneth Macleod's grand translation from the Scottish Bracelic. Remember his version of a "Puirtz a beul", rendered by Sir Hugh and his singers in the Capitol?
Father Gerald goes from
2
strength to strength. I wasn't quite convinced before, but now I think, sincerely, I agree with my mother that his drawings are the best & most original part of the whole book - which is no small achievement. You, Father, must feel flattered - if Franciscans are susceptible to flattery - by having your portrait so prominently and perpetually penned!
Needless to say, I haven't yet read all the "Annual" - it provides reading for many months; but anything I have read is first-class.
Now, I'd almost forgotten the most important thing of all. Ben
3
Riely, I think, it was, who told me about your illness. I hope you're better?
Incidentally, you mentioned some time ago - in 'hint more than promise' - the Dictionary of National Biography; and told me not to worry about the job. I must confess I didn't quite cotton on to your full meaning; could you elucidate it, I wonder?
And, a slight shadow of worry has been chasing me for a few weeks. You see, I gather my tenure of office is likely to last for one of three periods - in this order of probability, as well as brevity:
(i) 2 weeks;(ii) 6 weeks;(iii) 6 months.....
4
So you'll understand, Father, that another chat with you would do me all the good in the world. I may get script-reading and writing work on the air - even quite regularly but -!
beir buaiò & beannaic,
is mise, le mar-ion,
Pearse +

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61 Dollymount Ave.,
Saturday
Dear FR. Senan,
Many thanks for the
card. Glad you liked 'Land
Without Stars'. Thanks also
for the Annual. I think
its the best for several
years. The McCormack
feature is fine & the
Healy & Hogan features.
Here's hoping that
you'll soon be up
and around again.
All the liers,
B.K.

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Clonlea
Sandy ford
Co Dublin.
Sept. 28. Dec. 1946.
My dear Fr Perald
I am much more anxious about Fr Senan being sick and thinking of my contribution being omitted from the very big and interesting Capuchin annual, that I am about my rather ruffed & unfinished and very long verse. I hope and pray that Fr Senan will get better soon. What editor I ask you would have the large hearted generosity to publish such an effusion. Still I am perfectly satisfied with the promise of its publication next year. I was a little afraid that Fr Senan had decided that it was not up to scratch. I really think in the meantime I should make it more attractive & less stark. In fact I think it was providential that it had to be held over Besides whatever feeling I had momentarily of - I am ashamed to say - impred vanity - will add to its value. I have a paperstation that a preliminary hurt to ones vanity always contributes to any good that may be done by a special effort. One gets uneasy when things go too well.
Please give Fr Senan yourself and your grandstaff our conjoint love from Mrs Little and all of us here in Clonlea and tell himself to be sure and take great care to get well & get a good rest.
You will be glad to hear that our enterprises for a Concert Hall, & for Films are going sheat on around lines thank God. But you will be sorry to hear that Dick Forbes has been at death's door with heart trouble - but there is hope for him. Also Louis Ellman is sick with blood pressure - may be the prayers of his friends may driving him too like his two brothers into the Church, as also Colonel McFreth before he died. I am eatenessy grateful for your kind thoughts of writing me such a consoling letter
Yours, with all sorts of emphasis I wase for the Annual, and all sorts of good cheer for the new year, very sincerely, Christ I, Little.

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THE CAPUCHIN ANNUAL, 1946-47. Edited by Father Senan, O.F.M.Cap.,
Church Street, Dublin. Price 10s. 6d.
THIS year's Annual, as usual, leaves nothing to be desired in the way of editing, and is a most satisfying book to handle. It does, however, occur to one that since the annual has grown so, and assumed such permanent proportions, a less impermanent cover might be considered. A good book is a thing to put on a bookshelf and preserve ; and, apart from the expenditure of half a guinea, there are many reasons why people will want to preserve the Capuchin Annual.
On the list of contributors familiar, and famous, names appear in plenty, and in general the high standards of previous years are well maintained. Tomás MacGreevy, for instance, contributes two excellent articles, predominantly architectural ; Alice Curtayne continues with her 'Irish Saints,' and Richard King draws them superbly. There is a long account of the trek of O'Sullivan Bere, into which Aodh de Blacam condenses much scholarship. It is a book in itself complete with map and magnificent photographs. C. P. Curran writes about Hogan, the sculptor.
But there are new names, too, or at least new contributors, some of them tantalizingly nameless. One most remarkable feature is entitled 'Soliloquies of a Solitary,' being the sane and modest moralizings of a modern anchorite, a priest, who has elected to step out of busy pastoral life, literally, into the wilderness. This casual account of eremetical austerities calmly and deliberately undertaken reads very strangely nowadays. It is so casual as to be quite sensational. One does homage to the author and wishes him success ; he may have shed many of the trappings of civilization, but he has certainly not forgotten how to draw, if the drawings be his. Special mention ought to be made too of an enthusiastic talk by Mr. Sean Moylan on Irish America—a topical subject just now—which is prominently placed by the editor. This does not pretend to be dispassionate, but it is documented, and it carries conviction all the way.
There is much again about John MacCormack, photographs, personal reminiscences by friends and critical evaluation ; something, too, in a personal way, about Michael Healy. Both deserve remembrance very much. Otherwise there is perhaps an over emphasis on remembering, a days-of-yorish atmosphere, seasonable in Christmas numbers, that makes contemporary things seem even more melancholy than they actually are. Single reminiscences of old Irish ways are very well : it is the juxtaposition of too many laudatores temporis acti, with slight plaintive notes about wireless and the cinema, that saddens us. Thus, at one sitting, we become nostalgic over rhapsodies about childhood in Dublin, in Cork, in Waterford.
Finally, there are Father Gerald's drawings, gentle, mischievous, and seeming to grow better and better. Somewhere among them is a rather unmistakable figure, perched on a turf-barrow.
D. M.

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Ara Coeli,
Armagh.
8th January 1947.
Dear Father Senan,
I am very grateful to you and Father Gerald for your kindness in sending me a copy of the current Capuchin Annual.
I congratulate you on the varied and excellent fare you have provided in this number, and the very high standard you are maintaining in the Annual. It's a credit to you and to Ireland.
Wishing God's blessing on you and your work,
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
+ John D'Alton.
Rev. Father Senan, O.F.M.Cap.,
Capuchin Annual Office,
Church Street,
DUBLIN.

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THE CAPUCHIN ANNUAL
The Capuchin Annual for 1945-6 is a remarkable production published in Dublin and edited by Father Senan, O.F.M. Cap (10s. 6d.).
There are 590 pages of beautiful print on paper that is a luxury to handle. A portrait of the printer, John English, of Wexford, deservedly occupies a full page. The first 47 pages of advertisements are cunningly enlivened by extremely funny woodcuts heading each page by Father Gerald, O.F.M. Cap., giving the principal events of a Capuchin's day from dawn to midnight. These alone are worth the half guinea.
A Symposium of Tributes to John McCormack, with plenty of interesting unhackneyed photographs, is the feature that attracts us most, not only because the Editor subscribes his appreciation of McCormack, but generally as a prologue or epilogue to the discography of McCormack records which Mr. Philip F. Roden completed in the last issue of THE GRAMOPHONE. How that good man and great artist was loved! Edwin Schneider, the great accompanist, was always with him until 1938, when he retired, and Gerald Moore took his place. They both adored him, which is as good a tribute as a singer can have.
Sydney MacEwan, the Scottish tenor
who gave up a successful career for the priesthood (but there are still his records to delight us), writes that he little dreamt when he was a small boy listening to a McCormack record that one day he would be his friend, and that he would celebrate his Requiem Mass in S. Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow.
Ernest Newman writes of "a patrician artist, dignified even in apparent undress, with a respect for art which is rarely met with among tenors."
Dorothy Caruso, Enrico's wife, says poignantly, "John is not dead. Men of great hearts do not die." How true that is of him and of that other great tenor. And to quote Gerald Moore: "Caruso, than whom John never had a more friendly rival, once said to him, 'Giovanni, I heard that they have sold more records of you than me this year. Never let it happen again!'"
Finally, Compton Mackenzie sums up with this appreciation of his friend:
"I have met many great artists in my life, but I never met one quite so lovable as John. He was as simple as a child, as natural as an unspoilt countryside. His faith was ardent. His generosity was constant. Ireland mourns a devoted son. The wide world mourns the sweetest singer of his time."
F#.
B
The Gramophone June 1947

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FROM CASTLE LESLIE, GLASLOUGH, CO. MONAGHAN. TEL. GLASLOUGH 7.
Si Shan Leslie
New Year 1947
Please accept congratulations on the Capmachin annual:
finer than any printer could pro-
duce in England. It is a miscelle
of good paper, good value and
fine illustrations. Lady Leslie wishes
to become a Patron.

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POLPERRO,
EPSOM LANE SOUTH,
TADWORTH, SURREY.
TADWORTH 3389.
Dec. 1. 67
Dear Father & Grand,
Thank Thanks for the
Copy of the "Annual", which I
found awaiting no here on my
return from France. It is good to
read so many warm tributes to
Iohn M. Cormack. I wish I had
been able to write something more
worthwhile myself, but my how I
am quite to be among those present.
At the top of page 2nd, by the
way, "Effort" (tinie) is a misprint
for "effort". There little things will
happen when one doesn't see a
proof!
Jane Smith
Ernest Rennan

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Stadacona
Bir
16/4/48.
I appreciate your much your
sending me the Numeral so
long before the General
distributory. Thanks ever
so much also for the fine
plisto — a worthy tribute to
the tallest canel in Africa!
Best wishes K. H. H.

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Monday July 19
4 LOWER MONTENETTE
CORK
Dear Father Senan
How very kind of you to let me have an advance copy of the Annual soon. I have read much of it already with great pleasure, and not least the Stockley essay, which I am sure will please the family greatly. I have a letter this morning from Seumas Murphy to say that the bronze of the bustis being despatched from the factory next week.
I shall surely be bothering you soon with something or other. But meanwhile dare I make a very bold suggestion concerning the University here. Please forgive me for introducing beyond all reason.
However you know that the centenary of the College is to be celebrated next year; and it seems very unlikely that there can be much hope of getting endowments for scholarships or new buildings, such as I understand are being given to Queens College Belfast. But I believe that a good deal can be done with small resources, and I have various plans in hand myself. For instance I am collecting pictures by wellknown Irish artists, to form a gallery in the "Staff House" where most of the entertaining takes place. I have been promised a large number of landscapes and other attractive pictures by Sir John Lavery; and a lot of Walter Osbornes are being lent for the same purpose by Violet Stockley. And I have got some good Dermod Obriens already, and have hopes of getting others. I only mention this as one development that can be fitted in with the College centenary. Another is to clear the Aula Maxima and restore it, if possible. Another is to develop the library on various kines - for which I have created a useful precedent in starting
this Obrien Library of Irish History. I have no routine duties with students etc, and hence I have time to attend to these problems and I find a rehability very encouraging.
Now may I ask quite shamelessly (I have not even mentioned this to anyone, and I have no authority whatever for suggesting it) would you and the Capuchin Annual consider the possibility of endowing, for say three years, a special professorship of Art which could be established ad hunc for Tom MacReevy? I have in mind the endowment of the Hermione Lectures at Alexandra College in Dublin, and I wish there could be something similar here. Of course it would only mean giving perhaps 6 lectures, or even less, in the year; and personally I don't think that $50 would be too little for a special appointment of that sort. (I agreed myself to accept $100 a year, and felt most flattered when the College most unexpectedly asked me if I would accept a research professorship of modern Irish history. That assumed that I would be resident in Cork; but there were no specific duties except that I was known to be working at solid research for publication. They have since found me useful invarious directions, and are treating me very handsomely as from this autumn; but frankly I felt that their offer was most generous, and most flattering, from the start)
May I say that I suggest this to you, pratily because I know that MacReevy often has a struggle to continue working as a freelance, and that you have been most good to him. My own experience here has made me realise what a help it is, in obtaining facilities and in many other ways, to have the title of professor. I believe it might help him also; and it would certainly fall in with Orahillys general desire to break down the basis of the University's activities, by having lectures by experts which will attract the public. It would be a delightful contribution to the centenary if we could at least create a precedent for establishing
4 LOWER MONTENETTE
CORK
a professorship of the Fine Arts by having an endowment, for say three years, similar to the Hermione lectures. If it were a success, it should be said to continue it to rehabilite.
There are so many other things for which appeals will be made here in Cork - for extending various faculties, medical and other things, that I would far rather have this suggestion of mine considered outside Cork, but by someone like your kind self who has an affection for the University. I believe that MacReevy would be a real addition to the College, even in that slight connection with it; and it would probably help him in prestige - especially if he writes much for America. Also I believe that Orahilly would be very glad to have him - and his views about art critics are not easy to please. They are held here for men.
Another point (if you will forgive my going into such details) is that I hope the idea might appeal to you, on the assumption that you could get some value, at least, out of publishing some or all of his lectures in your periodicals.
Anyhow will you please forgive my boldness in suggesting it? I have absolutely no status in all this - except that I have been trying to do a few things myself in connection with the centenary, and I believe I am to be on a small committee which will be formed to make the arrangements
Again with many thanks
Yours very sincerely
Denis [Signature]

--- Page 18 ---
SENATOR PATRICK F. BAXTER, Chairman; DENIS ASPELL; PRADAR O'LOGHLEN; JAMES HICKEY, T.D.
AN U-IOLAR
STANDARD
1938, LTD.
(Catholic Ireland's National Weekly)
PHONE: 77316/7/8 (3 LINES)
"GRAMS" AQUILA, DUBLIN
STANDARD HOUSE,
PEARSE STREET,
DUBLIN.
21st July, 1948.
Rev. Father Senan, O.F.M., Cap.,
Capuchin Friary,
Church Street,
Dublin.
Dear Father Senan,
I see from an advance copy which Seamus Brady got that you have "done it again" with the Capuchin Annual.
I was at the dinner the other night to Colonel McCormick of Chicago Tribune and when we were discussing his North of Ireland Presbyterian background. I told him that there was a very good thing about the part played by the Presbyterians in '98 in the Annual, and also that I would see that he gets a copy. It might be very good publicity for you to send him one with deBlacam's article indicated, as he would probably mention it either in the paper or in his weekly broadcast to the faithful of the Middle West. Anyhow let me know what you feel like doing and I will drop him a line at the same time.
I hope you keep well. Certainly your hand has not lost its cunning in the field of high journalism.
All good wishes to Father Gerald.
Yours very sincerely,

--- Page 19 ---
PHONE:
DUBLIN 96591.
1nd Calsa,
CHURCHTOWN,
DUBLIN.
19/7/48
Dear Fr. Senan
You were very hind to send
me the lapucin annual, which
is a magazine to treasure.
Hallen often spoke of your
great hundres to her.
Thank you a thousand
times. May God bless you
yours sincerely
Anyo G. C. Ceaner

--- Page 20 ---
"KILL ABBEY,"
KILL O' THE GRANGE,
CO. DUBLIN.
TEL. 81095.
19th. July 1948
Rev. Father Senan, O.F.M. Cap.,
The Capuchin Annual Office,
Church Street,
DUBLIN.(P.O. Box I05),
Dear Father Senan,
On behalf of my wife and myself very
many thanks for copy of Annual received to-day.
I would like my name entered on the
roll of the Patrons Association, and I enclose
cheque £ 15. being subscription for life membership.
Very Sincerely Yours,

--- Page 21 ---
Cine
SUPREME COURT OFFICE.
COURTS OF JUSTICE,
FOUR COURTS,
DUBLIN.
20 July 1948
Dear Mr Symon:
Many thanks for the unusual rapidly arrived with its with earge of variety. The Maternith serving to take me first and I am now will hold everyone. The problems are furiously and very moving. Now I have made only letter on the lest here and there. An Eroke's letter was my first stop. As a box I remembered on become a Gold, alim. green-covered reprint of all that Pretorium territorial correspondence on the Bundard Book with Books and texting off there I knew or load access to. I suppose the idea started with six stem buttercks queer choice of the Book Bundard Books which led to a confusion amount of reputation. The correspondence in the R. I. indignated I think I Bearing Marion was equally queer. The course row from M from Marion to Imady Lowelan's Burrial and Francis.
You ought continue on anthology of Book Letters within. The Irregistered Mannish would come through well not An Eroke and An Efferger. I have no letter from Eroke that had
the graffic the lion but this letter must be rare. An Eroke had a great number which he burned after Wm Matthewson & Parrott's manning. and that loss is not reparable. Edwin O'Do's should make good pictures and then see another trag line of Burning Telegraph men of letter from the McDonaldson to the Marshallier. & Bumphries.
Meanwhile the matter and congradulation on this fine composed feeding and not to make regards to yourself and collateration
Smith & John
Efferger

--- Page 22 ---
laugh
glandal ongh
Tuesday
Dear Mr. Senan.
Thank you very much
for sending me a copy of
the Annual. I have getting
it. I am working
very hard at wood-casting
there days. I would like
to see a new movement
starting here in Aut. not so
much of Aut. but of
caption ships. We have all
been working to much about
Aut. I would like to get
back to the spirit of Chinese
Aut. and in a different way the
old cathedrals, all the work
A white caption is
to this purpose wood-casting
in the berk, as we can get
more detail and work into wood
probably, than any other material.
Thank you very much for
giving me name to the May's
communities came the I would like
to have done it, but I can't work
in stone. It would be very
kind of you - it you call ever
got me an order for wooden
station for Shushes - I have
a career working for me now and
find it hard to get enough to keep
us going. I would like the Shushes
in Ikeland at any rate to have
some decent stations neither the old
sugary stift nor the modern steamlined.
The cancer are the corest they're really a sun.
it are care get the district at least are
neither yours very discerned.Ian Shuan

--- Page 23 ---
"Yelen View,"
Myssyer Salthill,
Yalway.
20.7.'48.
Dear Father Senan,
Thanks very much
for safety of annual I was in
Dublin when it was forwarded on
here, and I didn't get it till last
night. It was a very pleasant
surprise.
I was up in Dublin for an
audition with Miss Mooney at the
Abbey. I was going as a papilla to
her new school here in September.
Thanks again for publishing
the poems.
Yours sincerely,
Jan O'Bram.
_____ "

--- Page 24 ---
July 20 1948
18 FITZWILLIAM SQUARE, DUBLIN.
Dear Father Senan
I am just writing to thank yourself
and everyone who have worked for it, for
the 1948 Annual. It is a very great one
indeed. Articles where I hear the writers voice
because I know them, and where my interest
must come from the written word only, as no
actor anywhere was have given what his memory
should have so well, as F. J. McCormick, and
Father Geralds chaurings are a chain of
delephales, as could not be done by anyone but
himself all those Jams are grand
your hardly
✓ The By Ells

--- Page 25 ---
14 Vincent Street.
Berkeley Road.
16th July 1948
Dear Father Senan.
I would like to tell you how much
I appreciate your goodness to me in sending
me the annual. It is such a beautiful
book to get and what pleased me most about
it was the beautiful article on band. God
rest his dear soul I think it is very like
the way he used say therigs I liked it very
much. There is also a very good tribute
to Professor Stockley I know Mrs Stockley
will be very pleased with it
The whole book is very lovely and
I do thank you very much for it
I hope yourself and Father Gerald are
keeping very well I will be very glad
to see you both when you have a little
time to spare
yours gratefully Mary E. Hardebeck.

--- Page 26 ---
Dear Father Seanan,
A thousand confratelations on the Journal. I have read only a portion of it as yet, but the immense variety and consistent standard of excellence are obvious; and, I think, make this pattern well the highest marks the Journal has readed yet. Who imagined that it could surpass itself?
a new engle could express an expression in Killany ? For: Molly
is peer senior with a lens. Mrs F. (under ever done
a picture-life of the Foreth ?
St Francis ? - or an illustrated artistic
P.S. When anyone going to read 30
test A. dep. to so long is as 30
and her hair ?
The McCormack feature moved me. It is
the best thing of the kind you ever did - better even
than the MacCormack feature last year, I think,
thanks to the amazing photography.
The Moore feature is exceptionally valuable.
I was slaw to see Pat Hudson's work
appreciated, & I course the "Ultra scene particularly
delighted me." "The Skephing Stones" has the very
air of the Nath. (Cambell's equally good)
Why has Navon Seanan the features
of Alfred O'Rahelly? Intentional? The sounds
are better than ever. The combate set, with
latter pursuing should be under a puzzle book.
Kerry, - who ever present that

--- Page 27 ---
Adolf Morath,
— PORTRAIT —
PHOTOGRAPHY
PREMIER BUILDINGS,
88, CHURCH STREET,
LIVERPOOL 1.
TELEPHONE: ROYAL 4120
20th July 1948.
The Very Reverend Father Senan,
DUBLIN.
My very dear Friend Father Senan,
I wish to express to you my sincere thanks for your great kindness in sending me your beautiful Annual. It is a great artistic and cultural work, full of fascinating articles and lovely pictures. I can well imagine the tremendous amount of work there is in such a production. Please accept my congratulations on this wonderful work.
I was particularly proud to see my humble photograph amongst the many illustrious Irishmen. Many of the personalities in your Annual I have, of course, both met and photographed, so that the captions given will be very useful for me to build up my own captions for my book on Ireland.
The weather does not yet seem to have made a great change for the better and I am patiently waiting for a sign of more or less permanent sunshine. In the meantime, I am busy in the darkroom printing the many hundreds of pictures which I have already taken.
I shall drop you a line telling you of my departure, which providing the weather is good, should be within the next week or two.
With fondest good wishes to you and Father Gerald.
Yours very sincerely,
Adolf Morath

--- Page 28 ---
98 Swan Court,
Chelsea, S.W.3.
20 July.
Dear Father Senan,
Thank you so very much for the copy
of the Capuchin Annual - what a lovely
book it is. That paper makes us
envious over here !! It is most kind
of you.
I was put in the alleed
into the whole work
Addies explored of Pelin
Rocks. Well please.
Yrs mst precipited
Sybi Thunderland

--- Page 29 ---
GLASLOUGH,
EIRE.
July 30 1948
Dear fr Senan
I was so glad to see you in the Dublin street through I was in an exhausted state. A Forestry well is no light burden however it has struck home and I believe we shall see an attempt to replant our lost heritage of sylvan brandy & strength.
Perhaps you will our day publish photographs of the first specimen trees left in Inland. It would make another of your wonderful series.
Thank you so much for the present superb number on which I could greety dilate but it is already going the roads.
Everybody, as poor old French Biggar said, has tried own corner to fight and adorn for Inland. How magnificently you do yours!
your sincerely
Shane Leslie

--- Page 30 ---
TRIBUTE TO A GREAT ACTOR
SOME few years ago Gaelic quarterly brought out its Christmas number in Midsummer, owing to circumstances beyond the control of the editorial staff.
If they had not insisted upon apologising to the readers nobody would have noticed that there was anything wrong, because its publishing day always was "a movable feast," and there was nothing in the contents about Christmas.
The "Capuchin Annual" has made no such mistake. I have been accustomed to welcoming it about Christmas time, but this year it wandered into the office just as July was making room for August, and all the Editor, say Rev. Father Senan, has to revolve its late appearance is: "The Capuchin Annual, 1948, has come very slowly up the way, and for the slowness we pray our readers' indulgence."
Well, the "Annual" is NOT a Christmas 628 pages of high grade printing and binding, with many fully coloured illustrations, takes some doing in these days of shortages and other difficulties which beset the printer's path.
And, anyway, it was worth the waiting.
F. J. McCormick
To my mind, the most impressive feature in this year's "Annual" is the splendid tribute to the greatest and most popular of Abbey Theatre actors, the late Peter Judge, better known to the multitude of playgoers as "F. J. McCormick."
I remember, as I think I have mentioned before, in the early days of his career at the Abbey, trying to persuade Peter to change his stage name. I wanted him to select something snapper and more remembered.
We debated the matter in the vicinity of the Dublin quays one night long after the Abbey had night rang out and the rain showed no sign of stopping, we adjourned the debate sine die. The discussion never was resumed.
The fame of F. J. McCormick became world-wide, but I still maintain that he would have been better advised to use a shorter nom de theatre. Look at the way it became shortened to "F.J." amongst all his friends and acquaintances.
ARGUS
Dignified Words
THE brilliant symposium of tributes which takes up so much space in the "Annual" by no means overestimates this great actor and fine Irishman, but I like best among them Father Senan's own tribute in his little preface and Mrs. Judge's few, heartfelt, dignified words of poignant force.
The pages of rotogravures of "F.J." as Peter Judge and in many of his character parts are excellent and will be treasured by his hosts of friends.
Varied Budget
FOR the rest, this year's "Annual," as usual, is almost too much of a good thing. You will need aid in reading it—either a substantial book at rest or a comfortable seat at a flat table. It is too heavy to hold.
The photographs of Irish scene knights of the camera while the sketches, stories and poems are well up to the usual standard.
Always I have been fascinated and amused by the silhouette cartoons with which the Rev. Father Gerald, O.F.M.Cap., embellishes the pages. They invariably deal with the lighter side of the
Friars' life, and this year he does not spare Father Senan himself.
They are close friends for years. One day I told Father Gerald that he was getting very thin.
Nodding towards Father Senan's bulky figure, he replied: "He sits above me at table."
The coloured plates consist of pictures of Irish saints by Richard J. King, an artist whose distinctive religious paintings have made his name very widely known.
Another thing I like about this issue—it is as patriotic as ever (a Irish abroad) but it is by no means as political as some previous numbers. The price is ten shillings and sixpence.

--- Page 31 ---
TELEGRAMS - AERLINGUS DUBLIN . . . TELEPHONES - EXECUTIVE 71801 - RESERVATIONS - 75805
Telephone 72872.
EXECUTIVE OFFICES - UPPER O'CONNELL STREET - DUBLIN
9, Lr. Abbey Street, Dublin.
17th August, 1948.
Ref. PSK/357/im.
Rev. Father Senan, O.F.M.Cap,
"Capuchin Annual",
Church Street,
Dublin.
Dear Father Senan,
May I belatedly, but none the less sincerely, thank you for the presentation copy of this year's "Annual", and at the same time may I ask you to convey to Seamus Campbell the deep appreciation of everybody in Aer Lingus, and particularly myself, for his fine article on our flight to Rome. It is unfortunate that this should now serve only as an epitaph to a project which could have meant so much to Ireland.
I haven't yet had time to read everything in the "Annual", but three things impress me very much: Sean O'Boyle's thoughtful, scholarly, and affectionate tribute to Hardebeck, is one of the finest things that you have ever published; Father Gerald's Thumb Nails of the Caps - particularly those of the more beefy types - are a joy to anybody's risibility, and beautifully executed; and the McCormick symposium is a comprehensive and nearly worthy memorial to his great simplicity and goodness.
As the writer of the first published Obituary of Peter Judge, I should have been proud to contribute a more studied assessment to the "Annual", but unfortunately I didn't know of your intentions.
With very many thanks, and with every good wish to Father Gerald, and yourself.
Yours sincerely,
European Air Services
AER LINGUS TEORANTA - MEMBER OF THE INTERNATIONAL AIR TRANSPORT ASSOCIATION (I. A. T. A.)

--- Page 32 ---
Downings House,
Prosperous, NAAS,
Co. Kildare.
27th August 1948
Rev. Father Senan, O.M.Cap.,
Editor,
Capuchin Annual,
Church Street,
DUBLIN.
Dear Father Senan:
I have delayed too long to thank you for the advance copy of "The Capuchin Annual", which I received with very grateful interest. Partly I was waiting to make some appraisal of the contents, but it is so packed with good things that a rapid appraisal is by no means easy. It has beguiled many an evening for me already and still I do not know a third of what it contains.
I can truthfully say that I found those letters you yourself unearthed of extraordinary interest: Lucas's letter to Father Tom O'Shea is a most touching human document; and Meagher's tribute to William Smith O'Brien - that is really what eloquence means. I would have liked more of them; my quarrel with this contribution is that it is too brief. Of course the McCormick tribute is wonderful. Among the lesser contributions, I greatly enjoyed J. D. Sheridan's "Michilin and I". The photography really is a revelation of what cameramen can do.
Felicitations and again many thanks,
Sincerely yours,

--- Page 33 ---
From PETER F. ANSON · HARBOUR HEAD · MACDUFF · BANFFSHIRE
Phone—Macduff 255
Aug 10th, 1948
My dear Father Senan,
The Annual arrived yesterday. I have not had time to read any of the articles yet, but the photographs are superb, and fill me with a nostalgia for Ireland. Many thanks.
This morning's mail brought a pathetic letter from poor Mrs Billiam O'Brien. It appears that she is in dire poverty, and almost unable to face the cost of living in France, but unable to get away from the country. She writes that she hopes to make a little money by occasional articles, and says she would be glad to review any books.
Remembering what her late husband did for Ireland, it strikes me that something ought to be done for her. Her address is
CIERF, Haute-Garonne, France ,
if you can think of any way to assist this distinguished old lady.
Yours fraternally,
Peter F. Anson

--- Page 34 ---
To Rev. F. SENAN
CAPUCHIN ANNUAL
P O BOX 105
DUBLIN
IRELAND
or 4000 W 119th St
New York 27 N.Y.
(This house being at
the corner of two streets)
Aug. 16th 1948
Dear Father Senan,
It is now 3.40 A.M. and
for the last hour I have been reading the
CAPUCHIN ANNUAL which I am so kindly
sent me. I began reading it yesterday,
Sunday Aug. 15th and (a holiday as well
as a Sunday) and devoured most of it.
Let me congratulate you on
having founded an Irish National
herodical. I am glad you published
tus sonnets BY my friend Mr. AUBREY
Fitzgerald Bell whose recent look on
CERVANTES (published BY the Oklahoma
UNIVERSITY) has been a great success in
every way. Although not a Catholic, Mr.
Bell has been very fair to Catholics
and Irish. I have not his look before me
2/
you know, as I write but such is my impression. Is
you know, there were many Irish in Spain in the time of CERVANTES.
This knips me to the homeless blot of
hastilion, me of the ugliest outrages
left behind BY Dublin Castle and the
retreating SASSENACH. On this business
however, the Capuchin annual has had
said its say.
I need not tell you that your
paper, your type, your illustrations
and your whole set-out challenge
comparison with the least magazines in
this country.
Enclosed is in payment for the
annuals you have sent. Your bank
will cash it.
Sad been the work. Continue
more live, Continue!
Sencer yours
Frances Melsullagh

--- Page 35 ---
The Echo
Emersonthy
11/9/18.
Our BookshelfCAPUCHIN ANNUAL
A VERITABLE MINE for the discerning book-lover: thus may truly be described "The Capuchin Annual for 1948 (I.C.A. Office, Church St., Dublin, 10s. 6d.). The Annual, greatest of Irish publications, which is now in its eighteenth year, finds its way to lighten the autumnal gloom of homes not only in Ireland but in every corner of the world where Irish folk have taken root and retain the love of the homeland. Variety is its key-note—the contributors include leading Irish writers and there are two outstanding features—scores of excellent reproductions in colour and black-and-white, of masterpieces of the photographic art, tastefully printed on art paper, and the novel and highly entertaining fantasies on Capuchin themes as represented by clever drawings executed by the associate editor, Rev. Fr. Gerald, O.F.M.Cap.
Readers of the Annual, however pronounced their tastes may be as regards art, sculpture, literature, music, nationalism, will find in the 628 pages of the 1948 Annual a veritable banquet providing indeed an amazing and refreshing diversity of sweetmeats.
A GREAT ACTOR
To the memory of the late F. J. McCormick (Peter C. Judge) whom the editor (Rev. Fr. Gerald, O.F.M. Cap.) describes as "an actor of heroic stature in both tragedy and comedy, and perhaps, the greatest character actor of his generation, humble, charitable and true-hearted." tributes are paid by several well-known folk such as Sara Allgood, Gabriel Fallon, Barry Fitzgerald, T. C. Murray Dame Sybil Thorndike, David Sears (Chairman, The Echo Co.), and Rev. Terence L. Connolly S.J. These composite tributes to great Irishmen, to which much space is devoted in the Annual each year, are written by leading authorities—this year by great playwrights, actors and critics. The late John McCormack and the late Dr. Vincent O'Brien were honoured in this manner in recent years.
FINE ACCOUNT OF '98
INSURRECTION
This is the 150th anniversary of the Insurrection of 1798 and the story of every phase of the Rising as told by Aodh de Blacam (remembered as a member of The Echo staff 30 years ago), forms one of the best features of this year's Annual, covering as it does over 40 pages, including several woodcuts. It is a gripping tale. In his scholarly account, Mr. de Blacam—rather ungraciously it seems to the reviewer—refers to Bunclody as a town "which shoneens still call Newtownbarry": he should be aware that, although Bunclody is the Irish name for the town (incidentally, this designation has been consistently used in these columns right since 1902), the official name is Newtownbarry—and local agitation, under the rule of two or three native Governments, seeking to have the official name changed to Bunclody has not borne fruit.
"SUPREME ARTIST"
Writing of McCormick, Sara Allgood states: "I never met an actor with less conceit, or with greater intelligence. His 'Joxer' was unforgettable." He was a supreme artist, according to Ernest Blythe, managing director of the Abbey Theatre. He was "the best and most finished actor on the world's English-speaking stage," writes Joseph Connolly. "He was a great artist and a great friend." Barry Fitzgerald states.
"He scorned the pseudo-Bohemian cult of lesser natures," writes T. C. Murray. "The cheap notoriety of the film star and the calculated whipping up of the public mind to excite a flashy interest in a player were to him hateful. He so loved his art that he despised all that tended to debase it." McCormick's wife (Eileen Crowe, the actress) writes: "In all the 21 years of our lives together, I never heard him say an unkind word about anyone. He had a wonderful and neverfailing sense of humour. Quietly and unobtrusively he was a deeply religious man."
SKETCHES OF SAINTS' LIVES
Alice Curtayne (Mrs. Stephen Rynne), who has written lives of St. Catherine of Siena and St. Anthony of Padua, gives a short account of five Irish saints—Kevin of Glendalough, Senan of Scattery Island, Fiacre of Broilum, Lawrence O'Toole of Dublin, and Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy. She states that St. Senan founded a numery at Inslinge on the Shannon and that he made many island settlements.
Senan is reputed by Co. Wexford folk to have built a church at Enniscorthy, where the name Templeshannon (Teampuil Senain) perpetuates his memory. According to Miss Curtayne, Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy was "an Irish aristocrat of high ecclesiastical rank, who died in a foreign land, unknown, in the guise of a beggarman, absolutely alone in death."
A discerning biographical sketch of the late Prof. W. F. P. Stockely, U.C.C., is given by Prof. Daniel Corkery.
Parish Priest of The Pacific is the title of an intriguing article by Seamus MacManus. Miss K. M. Murphy, Irish traveller, writes feelingly on memorable Masses offered in many lands; and missionary articles are also featured.
Exiles will find nostalgic pleasure in Henry Barratt's And I'll Remember Ireland, and Mrs. Greville-Nugent's The Place of Seven Wonders.
WILLIAM BULFIN
Benedict Kiely's contribution, entitled Man from the Pampas, deals with the life of the late William Bulfin, author of Rambles in Eirinn which the author describes as one of the best "travel books written about the island of Ireland"; Cahir Healy, M.P., writes on Art Richards, the Englishman who loved the Irish; Doran Hurley gives a fine account of the foundation of the American-Irish Historical Society in Boston fifty years ago. Thomas MacGreevy, the well-known critic, makes a good case against the widely prevailing idea that the name of Ireland's immortal poet, Tom Moore (1779-1852) should be mentioned diffidently out of respect for a literary fashion that has dominated the last century: Moore's best poetry, he says, is better than that of most of the writers whom Moore's detractors "would have us set up in his place."
FRANCISCANOPHILES
One of the outstanding articles this year deals with the Franciscan spirit. The author, Rev. James A. Brennan, states: "The attraction of Franciscanism is perennial and universal. Someone has coined the title, 'Franciscanophiles' for those lovers of St. Francis who admire from without the fold, and whose number is so great as to suggest the existence of a Fourth Order."
"There is so much poetry interwoven with the Franciscan story, and it has been the inspiration of so many poems, that one can hardly write about the Franciscan spirit at all without the poet's pen to turn it into shape. St. Francis himself was a poet whose 'Canticle of the Sun' is only matched by the 'Canticle of Canticles' or by the sublime songs of St. John of the Cross, and after him there have been many Franciscan poets, not to mention those outside the Order who have sung its praises. It is obviously a unique thing, then, this Franciscan ideal which has so enriched the world, paradoxically by appearing in the habit of poverty."
The essence of Franciscanism lies in the day-to-day pursuit of religious perfection, he says, and men to-day are in more urgent need of being won back from the vanities of the world than was the case in the 13th century when the Order was launched. "The world itself to-day is in danger of losing the vision of God. Society needs something like the Franciscan spirit."
Sean O'Boyle writes on the life of the late Carl Joseph Hardebeck, rediscoverer of Irish music, of whom Liam O'Buachala once said, "His work in the cause of Irish nationality is no less important than the contribution in bravery and daring of all our volunteers and warriors." Eileen F. Quinn treats of the supreme sacrifice
made by one of Ireland's noblest sons, Terence McSwiney, Mayor of Cork (1879-1920).
MANY POEMS
Poems published in the Annual include: Liberty, Equality, Eternity (M. J. Labern); The Song of The Shoes, The Song of Half-a-Crown and The Song of the Wexford Sailor (D. L. Kelleher); The End of the World and Dirge (Ian Stuart); The Fairy-M

--- Page 36 ---
Milltown,
Co. Galway,
4 : 8 ! '48
Father Senan, O.F.M.,
The Capuchin Annual Office,
Church St.
Dear Fr. Senan,
I was an ex-clerical student invalided out with a permanently stiff knee, and I took to playwriting. I have had two productions accepted for production in the Autumn. In my first two plays the late F.J. McCormick played leading roles, and two of the xx contributors to your symposium mention his Mickle Conlon in my second play as his last great role, and praise his beautiful rendering of the Our Lady legend, and death soliloquoy at the end of that play.
During the rehearsals of my plays I got to know FiJ. very well, and I xxxxxxxx most anxious to get a copy of this Annual, which contains such a splendid and well deserved tribute to his memory. But I am the neediest playwright in Christendom, and one of my many compulsory economies is non-membership of the
A.P.C.A. Whether in such circumstances there is any possibility of getting a copy I do not know. If you can spare one I would be deeply grateful. I enclose a P.O. for II/- for copy and postage.
xxxxxxxx Apologies for any inconvenience caused, and many thanks. (If you cannot spare a copy I will quite understand.)
Yours sincerely
Michael J. Molloy
(Michael J. Molloy)
P.S. In the ease of symposia on such men as the two McCormicks it might be a good idea to begin with a brief account of their careers. Readers of twenty or ten years hence (for the these Annuals are carefully preserved in most cases.) would find these very helpful. As it is they may find the symposia rather scrappy and tantalising. They are very well for this generation who are familiar with the careers of these men

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REVIEWS
Capuchin Annual Pays Tribute to Abbey Actor
HERE is the bulky, lavishly illustrated, beautifully printed Capuchin Annual on my desk again for review. I have been reviewing the Annual for many years now, and have just realised that the poor stock of superlatives has been exhausted in reviewing previous issues.
With typical Franciscan generosity, Father Senan, its editor, has gathered into over 600 pages untold riches of text and picture; printed it on paper that somehow exudes warmth and richness, and now presents it to us with the same covers but with new and even more generous contents. Story, article, poem, picture and drawing crowd the pages in generous measure, and they are of the high quality that makes the Capuchin Annual sui generis.
Once again the advertisement pages are enlivened by those familiar silhouettes, skilfully and humorously drawn by Father Gerald, O.F.M.Cap., a member of a well-known Belfast family. He
McCormick in his role of "Shell" in the film "Odd Man Out."
gives us a panorama of domestic life amongst the Capuchins, with the figure of Father Senan very much in evidence.
THE special picture feature this year is devoted to the much-lamented Abbey Theatre actor, F. J. McCormick. Full-page sepia portraits give us McCormick in the genius of his many stage roles, from "Joxer" Daly to Shell in the film "Odd Man Out."
No Abbey actor has been requited more fully by the affectionate memories of the playgoing public, nor was any actor more unconscious of his title to fame than McCormick. The new art that came out of that dinghy place beside the Lifty in Middle Abbey Street has had its great figures, starting with the Fays; it will never have a greater one than F. J. McCormick, whose character-acting—as near perfection as makes no matter—was a combination of sheer genius and deep study of the mind of the character, as the playwright conceived it.
AS the Annual's pictures show, McCormick spoke with many voices; his genius flashed in so many different ways that even the most uncritical and casual of Abbey theatre-goers will not demur at the rhetorical summing-up that a McCormick comes only once in a
lifetime, and that we shall not see such acting again.
These pictures have evoked for me the portraits which the flowering genius of McCormick presented to the public since he played a small part away back in 1918 in Seamus O'Kelly's "The Bribe." Through these pictures I can see again the eloquent hands and twitching shoulders of "Joxer" Daly of "Juno"; his shabby "Fluther" of "The Plough and the Stars," the tragic dignity of Yeats's "Oedipus the King," the garrulousness of Seamus Shields in "The Shadow of a Gunman," the playboyish John Duffy of "The White-headed Boy," his Professor Tim and Rabbit Hamill of the Shields plays.
Whether speaking Shaw or Ibsen, Yeats, Synge or O'Casey, McCormick was a star in a theatre which rejects the starry idea, and speaks only of a company. He reverenced the Abbey tradition; his own integrity as an actor forced him to devote all his genius to the smallest Abbey part as to the biggest. And this reverence for a tradition kept him in Dublin when he could have gained greater fame outside Ireland.
With the Annual's picture tribute to McCormick is a symposium by a great array of writers, actors, stage-lovers and friends. Each contribution is a generous and heartfelt tribute to the man and the actor whose fame and the gallery he peopled for us are safe in the memory.
THIS tribute apart, there are full colour reproductions of a series of Richard King drawings of Irish saints, and pages and pages of pictures of Ireland's scenic beauty. Among the articles is one by Cathal O'Byrne recalling sunny days in Hollywood and a memory of Easter Week is evoked by another Belfast writer, Betsy Gray. Aodh de Blacam re-tells vividly the story of '98 and Henry Barratt, en route for South Africa, writes nostalgically under the title, "I'll Remember Ireland." Thomas MacGreevy discusses Thomas Moore, and the Editor presents a selection of "Letters of Irish Interest."
So from page to page the Capuchin Annual offers the reader history, literature, story-telling, art, verse, biography and compelling picture. In sum, an offering of rich, good fare to be read, and kept for re-reading.
T. O'K.
The Capuchin Annual, 1948. (10s 6d.)
F. J. McCormick.

--- Page 38 ---
"pinorum,"
179 bócan nát Šanb,
nát maonais,
baile áta cliat.
16.7.48
Atair Oiris. óil,
I hope you enjoyed your holiday. Weather here wasn't too good.
Yesterday morning I got the Annual. Jura míle mait agat, Naturally, I've had no time to do more than glance at it yet, but it seems as good as ever. Dick Ring's illustrations are terrific.
Now : about the exam.
2
Results appeared on the board in the Main dall last week. All that told me was — that I had failed. Well ! I've spent the last week rushing around from registrar to registrar, from office to office, making phone-calls and seeking audiences — in an effort to get the position clarified. Which is why I didn't communicate with you sooner.
What I've found out to date amounts to this :
I failed in Logic. I did well in all other subjects (Irish, English, Spanish, History, Latin) — in fact, a
3
grain of consolation, I've been complimented about as highly as could be by the professors of English, Spanish, and History — but, since I've technically failed the whole exam, I can't be awarded honours in any paper, no matter what the mark.
I've repaired the damage not too badly, I think, by gaining permission to go strait on to the 2nd year course in Spanish and English (which together can make up a Modern Languages degree) in
October, without being held up, I will, of course, have to repeat concurrently First Logic, but that won't be too difficult now.
I'd like to carry on Irish in
4
some way, but that would probably mean a double degree. I mean to contact the professor of Irish on the matter.
I hope I'll see you sometime when you're not too busy.
My own poem comes out quite well in print. Thanks for the grand note at the back. The idea of a fifty Pearse number next year sounds fine.
Regards to Father Gerald and Tom MacGreevy.
beir buaio y beannait,
Pearse.
}

--- Page 39 ---
Capuchin
Annual
THE CAPUCHIN ANNUAL, 1949.
Edited by Father Senan,
O.F.M.Cap. One Guinea.
THE 1949 Capuchin Annual
(published to-day) is bigger, better and brighter than ever. To give even a list of its various features and a detailed account of its many magnificent illustrations would put a severe tax on an overcrowded Christmas Book Page. One has, therefore, to be selective.
A personal choice of articles would include the following: "My Earliest Irish Friends," by Mrs. William O'Brien (still happily able to wield an active pen), in which figures like Canon Sheehan, Michael Davitt and Archbishop Croke live again; "The Jacobite War in Ireland," by Sir Charles Petrie; "Pastor Angelicus," by the Editor, which is a revealing study of Pope Pius XII, accompanied by as fine a gallery of pictures as have ever appeared in an Irish magazine; "James Clarence Mangan," by Aodh de Blacam; "Melleray Afternoon," a charming sketch by J. F. Reynolds; "Seumas O'Kelly," by Aidan O'Hanlon, in which justice is done to the memory of one of our best modern writers, and a survey of the last fifty years of Irish painting by Thomas McGreivy.
The pièce de resistance of the art section is the collection of 48 full-page photographs by Adolf Morath. They include His Grace the Archbishop of Armagh, the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste, the Ceann Comhairle, the Minister for External Affairs, Mr. de Valera, Senator Margaret Pearse, Madame Gonne MacBride, Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. Jack Yeats, Rev. Dr. Patrick Browne, Mr. Daniel Corkery, Mr. D. L. Kelleher, Mr. Joseph McGrath, Gen. Aodh MacNeill, Robert and Mrs. Montieth, and many other notabilities. They are all superb examples of the modern photographic art.
J. M. B.

--- Page 40 ---
CUPLA FOCAL
By Rev. R. F. Walker, C.S.Sp.
MAKE IT a point to include in your Christmas reading programme the Capuchin Annual's (1949) authoritative symposium on the urgent issue of The Teaching of Irish. With much of it, in one way or another, you will be likely to disagree. But read it all the same.
★ ★ ★
THE contributors to this symposium are, one and all, writers and lecturers of great distinction. The main article is contributed by Mr. Joseph O'Connor, County Kerry, author and retired school inspector, whose connection with the Irish language goes back sixty years. There are comments by Aodh de Blacam, Earnan de Blaghd, the Very Rev. Dr. Padraig de Brun (President, U.C.G.), Seamus Campbell, M.A., Professor Daniel Corkery, D.Litt., Gwynfor Evans, M.A., An Fear Mor, Rev. Father Henry, O.F.M.Cap., D. Kelleher (General Sec., I.N.T.O.), Diarmuid Mac Fhionnlaoich (President, Gaelic League), Thomas McGreevy, Professor Stanley Nisbet, M.A., Aindrias O Muimhneachain, Tomas O Muircheartaigh, Rt. Rev. Mgr. Arthur H. Ryan, D.D., D.Ph., Sceilg and Eleanor Lady Yarrow.
A goodly company, truly. And even though it may include some who admit with scholarly candour that they know little Irish or none at all, this concentration of trained and cultured minds on a problem of national importance will be welcomed.
★ ★ ★
BRIEFLY, the thesis proposed by Mr. O'Connor is that the Irish language drive since 1919 has failed, and that the failure is mainly due to excessive preoccupation in the primary schools with reading and writing, which Mr. O'Connor regards (with an admittedly "pronounced bias") as ineffective media for acquiring a spoken language.
Conversely, he sees no hope of improvement unless the teaching of Irish in the primary schools is re-organised on an oral basis, and "Grandma Moran's Kitchen," where two Yankee boys of his acquaintance became fluent speakers of Irish without ever hearing of a grammatical rule.
The remainder of Mr. O'Connor's article deals somewhat depressingly with the decline of the Gaeltacht he knows it and in a passing way with "compulsory" Irish, simplified spelling and general teaching through Irish.
★ ★ ★
ON the last issue most teachers will agree with the three conditions which the writer lays down—Irish must be the teacher's vernacular or quasi-vernacular, Irish must be the pupil's vernacular or quasi-vernacular, and there must be an adequate terminology. Not all, however, will subscribe to his categoric assertion that "as the three pre-requisite conditions are never fulfilled in the Galldacht there can be no justification for teaching other subjects (than History and Geography, Needlework and Arithmetic) through Irish in Galldacht schools."
And a loyal and hard-working primary teacher may feel justified in taking exception to Mr. O'Connor's reference (a propos of tables, etc., through Irish) to "the mumbo-jumbo memory of so easily forced upon the prehensile memory of young children."
Still, even those who differ strongly with Mr. O'Connor will admire the hardy sincerity with which he accuses the Irish movement and its protagonists with pretence, and calls upon "earnest Irishmen of goodwill to give it the
dispassionate consideration it deserves and . . . to take action to set right those things that are wrong."
★ ★ ★
IN the forty-two page discussion which follows, the distinguished contributors interpret their terms of reference with great latitude.
Personal anecdote, digression and an occasional mild passage of dialectic shadow-boxing tend to obscure the main issue—the teaching of Irish—in a general survey of the Irish revival.
Nevertheless, the common layman will feel grateful for the incontrovertible evidence which emerges from the symposium (in itself evidence enough) of the unquestionable progress made over the last quarter century—progress to which every chalk-dusted teacher, in spite of his difficulties and exasperations, will probably be ready to bear testimony. The present system may have its faults and may call for readjustment based on the experience gained.
That is quite another matter, to which the competent authorities will soon, doubtless, give the proper attention.
★ ★ ★
MR. O'CONNOR speaks of his article as a "public accusation." A dispassionate public will probably concede that counsel for the prosecution has made a case for the fallibility of human institutions. Sifting things out for himself, the lay juryman will need to distinguish between the wider issue of the revival of the spoken word of Irish among our people and the more restricted issue of the place of Irish in the school.
Nationally, the wider issue is the more important. Would it be sufficient to say that there exists in the country sufficient latent knowledge of the language to make Ireland Irish-speaking overnight, could we but remove the prohibiting influences? Thousands of boys and girls leave our primary and secondary schools every year sufficiently equipped—perhaps imperfectly but sufficiently—to converse in Irish. But they are at once engulfed in a morass of Anglo-Americanism.
And from this they can only be protected by a far-reaching economic and social programme such as that outlined in a statesmanlike way by Mr. Earnan de Blaghd.
★ ★ ★
MEANWHILE, leaving the grand strategy to those whose task it is, let us concern ourselves with the wider and more important issue of getting into circulation the wealth of Irish which lies in all sorts of places unused.
If for the highest and most effective motive of all, the Christian one, we all spoke our cupla focal to the milkman, the bus conductor, the shopkeeper and the neighbour, the Capuchin Annual symposium would probably never have needed to be written.

--- Page 41 ---
The Irish Catholic, February 9, 1950
THE CAPUCHIN ANNUAL
The Capuchin Annual, 1949. Price 21/-.
It there were any superlatives left that have not been employed by reviewers in describing previous issues of the Capuchinal Annual, or put to baser uses by film publicity men, it would be quite legitimate to use them in connection with this giant edition.
Certainly there is nothing like it in Ireland—perhaps not in the world. The more lavishly produced American magazines look garish beside it, and there is no comparison between them in point of quality of contents.
Pride of place must be given to the magnificent section which treats in prose and picture of the present Holy Father. Father Senan's research which results in a very comprehensive account of the life-story of Pious XI is equalled only by the completeness of his choice of photographs dealing with that varied life-story.
A valuable symposium on The Teaching of Irish is led off by former Inspector, now best best-seller novelist, Joe O'Connor and many of the challenging statements he makes are taken up and argued about by authorities such as Aodh de Blacam, Earnan de Blaghd, Dr. Padraig de Brun and An Fear Mhor.
The Irish Portrait Gallery, composed of forty-eight photographic studies by Adolf Morath, is a striking demonstration of the way in which the camera can be used as effectively as a brush by one who is a consummate artist.
Irish poetry takes time for its worth to be recognised, but it is not too rash to say that some of the poems contributed by An tAth Colmcille to this Capuchin Annual—especially his ballad on Ballyneety—are destined to take their place among the more popular Gaelic compositions.
James Clarence Mangan is worthily commemorated in an article by Aodh de Blacam, though there is more about the background of his life in it than of his life itself. In Black Irish Gearoid MacEoin tells of the strong Irish influence in the West Indies, while J. C. Coleman takes us into the dim dampness of the little-known Irish Caveworld.
There is much more, of course, than can even be mentioned here. The price asked for the whole is high—printing costs, and the determination of the Editor to be satisfied with nothing less than the best for his readers, are responsible for that—but many a guinea has been thought-lessly spent on things that are of far less value and that are less likely to provide lasting joy.

--- Page 42 ---
SOMETHING FOR
EVERYBODY
DURING the nineteen years of its existence the "Capuchin Annual" has grown steadily, until to-day it has a "middle-aged spread" of nearly 700 pages.
Its price has grown, too, until, instead of the nimble "half-dollar" for which it could be procured in the days of its youth, it is fearlessly charging 21/- for a copy.
Nobody who can afford the increased charge will deny that the publication is worth the money. The only serious drawback to the guinea a copy is that it may debar a number of people at home from enjoying the "Annual" as hitherto.
As usual, a feature of the "Annual" is its illustrations. Apart from the profusion of delightful, humorous silhouettes by the Associate Editor, Father Gerald, O.F.M.Cap., and the drawings and colour plates by the distinguished Irish artist, Richard J. King, there are pages and pages of magnificent photographs of Irish scenery from all parts of the country, and a unique "Irish Portrait Gallery" consisting of forty-eight full-page camera studies by eminent artist-photographer, Adolf Morath.
Sometime during the coming year, the energetic and versatile Editor, Father Senan, O.F.M.Cap., might consider publishing a selection of the "Annual" illustrations separately: it should prove a best seller.
Father Senan's own admirable study of the Pope, "Pastor Angelicus," is enriched with striking photographs. He also contributes to this issue an eloquent little tribute to "An Craoibhin," and continues his interesting selection (with annotations) of "Letters of Irish Interest." This year the letterwriters include John Boyle O'Reilly, Father Pierre Jean de Smet, S.J., and Roger Casement.
To merely recapitulate the literary contents of the magazine would use up virtually all the space at our disposal. This year's symposium (always a noteworthy feature) eddies briskly around Joe O'Connor's confession of disappointment in the progress of the language revival and is participated in by many prominent writers and workers for the cause. It is a lively and thought-provoking feature.
Another excellent contribution is a very fine study of Mangan by Aodh de Blacam, who deals with the ill-fated poet most sympathetically with generous quotations from his best work.
An Irish literary figure of a later period, Seumas O'Kelly, is admirably dealt with by a young
Dublin journalist, Aidan O'Hanlon. One of the most interesting items in the "Annual" is Mrs. William O'Brien's reminiscences, "My Earliest Irish Friends," in which the gifted widow of the famous Irish statesman recalls memories, amongst others, of Canon Sheehan, Michael Davitt and Dr. Croke.
A veteran Irish story-teller from Donegal, long resident in America, Seumas MacManus contributes three short stories of the type which made him famous in his schoolmastering days.
An interesting feature is a complete list of all the phonograph and gramophone records that John McCormack ever made. There is a very informative article on "The Jacobite War in Ireland, 1688-1691, by Sir Charles Petrie, Bart., President of the Military History Society or Ireland. Viewed through the rose-tinted glasses of memory the one and only D. L. Kelleher, gives us a little cluster of vignettes recalling the Cork city of his early days, and there is a profusion of other good things pressed down and running over.
In short there never was such a "Capuchin Annual" since the genial editor and his capable assistant, Father Gerald, launched the first number virtually twenty golden years ago, thereby marking initiating one of the most important developments in modern Irish journalism.

--- Page 43 ---
DUBLIN, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1950
GUENING HERALD
FL 995
No Admission For This
A wrapper marked "Non Admis" by the Communist authorities in Prague. It is from a package which contained copies of the Capuchin Annual, which were requested by Catholics in Czechoslovakia.
Reform - Dublin!

--- Page 44 ---
The Capuchin Annual, 1950-51
(21/-).—The Annual has certainly increased in bulk since its early days, and of necessity in price. It is a struggle for the majority of periodicals to keep going at any price, but this one looks as if it were prospering in spite of the difficulties that confront all publishing enterprises. The greater number of the contributions, literary and pictorial, this year are records of Holy Year travellings to Rome. Some of them tell of journeys by luxury coach services that would make the pilgrims of old who tramped the roads and those who rode turn green with envy if they take interest in to-day's transport. Better still is travel by air. Bublin or London to Rome in one day. One would like to read what someone amongst the hundreds who went by ordinary train could say about the transport ride of the journey or journeys. Pedestrians and cyclists have recorded their experiences in other publications. However whether the pilgrims went by plane or the long hard road—and Continental roads can be hard, indeed—the purpose was the same—to participate in the Jubilee. The photographic record of the journey to Rome and back by Mr. T. J. Molloy is excellent in every detail. Mr. Joe O'Connor writes on Kerry, and the article is illustrated by fine photographs. An article by the late Aodh Blacam on "The Curse of Cromwell" could be improved by a little attention to the chronology of the campaign. Why cannot some publisher reprint the late Father Denis Murphy's "Cromwell in Ireland," one of the very best books on that period. Mr. Blacam also contributed an article on his Jubilee pilgrimage to Rome. This is an excellently written record. Mrs. Clare Sheridan made the journey to Rome on a 10 h.p. car, and her story is informative and, needless to say, well written. Miss Alice Curtayne has an article on "Tara," part of which becomes topical on the abstraction of the Stone of Scone (the Lia Fail to many) from Westminster Abbey. An outstanding article is "Commentary on Irish Musical History," by Mr. Michael A. Bowles. He is an authority on

--- Page 45 ---
The Capuchin Annual
The Capuchin Annual, 1950-51.
Capuchin Annual Office, Church Street, Dublin. Price £1 1s.
THERE is a peculiar fittingness in the fact that the current "Capuchin Annual" makes its appearance on the eve of St. Patrick's Day.
It is as representative of Ireland as the National Festival; it is as deeply concerned with the true welfare of the country as our national apostle.
It is obvious that those who prepare this Annual believe that only the best is good enough where it is
There is a poignancy about the fact that there are here the last writings of Aodh de Blacam—in many respects they are among the best things he wrote. We have read many other descriptions of the Holy Year in Rome, but none that we know of take us more gently by the hand and show us so vividly the whole wonderful scene, undamped by the unprecedentedly heavy rain of December last in Italy.
Whatever Alice Curtayne writes is well worth reading. This is true of her scholarly, yet attractive account of Tara, its vanished glories and its need for proper recognition.
Before Michael Bowles left us for New Zealand he compiled a survey of Irish music which, despite its author's intention to avoid controversial matters as far as possible, is bound to meet with no great unanimity of agreement from its readers. That is all the more reason why it is well worth reading.
Kerry and Kerrymen figure prominently in this "Capuchin Annual." The beauties of that scenic country are mirrored in expertly-taken photographs and the character of its men and women is portrayed in picture and word by a variety of contributors.
Naturally, Holy Year and Rome and Italy all are spotlighted. Perhaps the most striking pictures of all in the more than 120 pages devoted to photographs are those showing President O'Kelly and Ambassador Walshe after the former's arrival in Rome and Archbishop Cushing being welcomed by the Holy Father.
This latest cultural feast prepared for our enjoyment by Padre Senano is in the best tradition of its illustrious predecessors; in some respects it excels the best of them.
Aodh de Blacam, whose death has occurred since he wrote his account of the closing days in Rome of the Holy Year which appears in the new "Capuchin Annual."
a question of showing Ireland to the world. Hence there is the stamp of class about the whole production; there is nothing here which we may be at all ashamed of as representing Irish life.
Not only is the presentation excellent, but the quality of the contributions and the distinction of the authors and artists are maintained at a high level.
Alice Curtayne explains in an article in the "Capuchin Annual" why the usual impression left after a visit to Tara is one of disappointment, and makes a plea for a more worthy acknowledgment of the central position the famous hill holds in our history.

--- Page 46 ---
JOTTINGS
by MAN ABOUT TOWN
Time And DEAR me, how time does fly to be sure! Looking at the smart, fat copy of the "Capuchin Annual" for 1950-51 spread before me in all its splendour, mine eyne caught the words "Twentieth Year of Publication" on the title page. I can hardly believe that I have been looking at Capuchin Annuals for twenty years; but it is only too true, for not one issue has escaped me. Alas, the half-dozen or so columes that now grace the Capuchin Annual shelf in my very private and personal bookroom bear only too eloquent testimony to the leech-like qualities of my book-borrowing friends. A reminiscence. A year ago or so I happened to be visiting an old friend whom I had not seen for a matter of five years or more, and on his bookshelves I saw a treasured volume of my own that I had lent him in the days of our intimacy. "I suppose you're finished with this?" I said hopefully. "Ah, leave it with me for a little bit longer," said he, quite seriously. . . .
* * * THE new annual is designed as a souvenir of the Holy Year celebrations. The indefatigable editor, Father Senan—how on earth does he find time to do all he does?—was the leader of a small pilgrimage which went to Rome in March. It took in an enviable number of celebrated places in France, Switzerland and Italy, and the experiences of the pilgrims are described with interesting personal comment in three separate articles by Chevalier Thos. MacGreevy, Senator Margaret Pearse and T. J. Molloy. All who know the Capuchin Annual's form need hardly be told that there is a multitude of striging illustrations, beautiful pieces of photography, to go with these articles. There is another account of a pilgrimage by Clare Sheridan, the noted sculptor and author, who is a first cousin (on her mother's side) of Winston Churchill and Sir Shane Leslie; and yet another by Aodh de Blacam, one of the last articles to come from the pen of that gifted and versatile journalist, who died with tragic suddenness soon after his return.
The Irish THE volume will be eagerly sought by those who want to have by them a permanent record in words and pictures of Rome and the Pope in Holy Year, but there is much more in it besides. Old Ireland is not forgotten by any means. If you want to know what Kerry and its people are like, and about the things that happened in that wild and beautiful country in days gone by, you must read Joe O'Connor's contribution. Nobody knows more about Kerry than this genial novelist who was born there and has lived there all his life. Again the photographs are many and beautiful. Then you may like to turn to the end and inspect the new selection of portraits by Adolf Morath, a photographic artist whose work is known to all in this country who care for art in any of its forms. Is he the greatest photographer in the world to-day? I do not know; but I do not hope to see photographs approaching his in the perfection of their style and the cunning of their detail.
* * * I HAVE not space at my disposal to enumerate all the features of the Annual, but I should like to mention the thrilling and touching tribute by that great and gentle soul, the late Archbishop Mulligan, to the Capuchin Bishop Hartmann, a great missionary who laboured in India in the last century; a survey of Irish musical history by Michael Bowles; and a characteristic contribution by that master of pure fun, John Desmond Sheridan. Father Senan continues from the previous Annual the series of letters of Irish interest, private letters written to Sir John Gilbert and by Lord Russell of Killowen and others. There is nothing of historical or scholarly significance in most of these, but they are very human documents that induce a thrill of sympathy. The Annual is again a guinea to buy. It is certainly not too much as money goes these days for such a compilation. one that must have been very costly to produce. Once again I should like to congratulate Father Senan on his achievement.
* * *

--- Page 47 ---
NOW and
THEN
AN OCCASIONAL COMMENTARY
By DENIS GWYNN
POWER AND PEARSE
ALBERT POWER'S magnificent bust of Thomas Davis, which has been presented to Arus an Uachtarain by the Irish Government is apparently one of three casts from the original. Is it too much to hope that another cast will be made and presented to the City Hall in Cork? Albert Power was not only a very great sculptor, but a close friend of the national leaders of his generation. He was particularly a friend of Patrick Pearse and of his brother, Willie Pearse, who was a professional sculptor like their father. As a boy at Sgoil Eanna in its yearly years. I used to meet Power often when he came to see Willie Pearse, who was art master there. He was short and strongly built, and all his work had a massive virility; whereas Willie Pearse's sculptures were rather vague and dreamy like himself. He was a tall gaunt man with long straight hair, grown thick as in a sculptured head. He had a sad gentle manner, which resembled his brother in some of his moods, though Willie lacked the intense passion which made Patrick Pearse so dynamic when he was roused.
A SILVER JUBILEE
Next week the Father Mathew Feis in Cork will celebrate its silver jubilee, when it is opened by the Co-adjutor Bishop, Most Rev. Dr. Lucey. In its twenty-five years of continuous growth, the Feis has become one of the chief cultural events for the whole province of Munster and it now attracts many competitors from outside as well. For some years past the number of entries has been considerably over 2,000, and this year it approaches 3,000. For its more recent progress, credit is due largely to the enthusiasm and organising abilities of Fr. Mathew, O.F.M., Cap.; but two members of the original committee are still actively connected with it, Fr. Micheal, and Mr. J. T. Horne.
FATHER MATHEW FEIS
It is not yet a century since Fr. Theobald Mathew died, but his name has become identified with many good works. Holy Trinity Church, which is usually described as being a memorial to him, was in fact built by his efforts as a young priest in Cork before he had yet started his great temperance campaign. The Fr. Mathew Halls, both in Cork and in Dublin, were opened as centres of recreation in memory of his labours, and the Fr. Mathew Feiseanna have been named after him, as they have been organised by the Capuchins in his halls. Many monuments and memorials to him have been established in all sorts of places. His name, too, is given to that excellent monthly magazine, the "Fr. Mathew Record," which has done much to foster religious art in modern Ireland.
Lewk Escumeris
April 6, 1957.
O.F.M. AND O.F.M., Cap.
By a careless slip in a recent note here. I stated wrongly that Fr. Theodore Crowley, who has been appointed to the Lectureship of Philosophy at Queen's University, Belfast, is a Capuchin (O.F.M., Cap.), whereas he is a Franciscan (O.F.M.). Both branches of the Order are, of course, well known in Cork, and the new Franciscan church is rapidly nearing completion behind the Courthouse, where it will replace the old church, of which many of us have affectionate memories. The Capuchins have shown special versatility and enterprise among the religious Orders in Ireland. In the "Capuchin Annual" Fr. Senan has created one of the most lavish and handsomely produced publications of its kind on this side of the Atlantic.
FR. SENAN
As a member of a most gifted and enterprising family from Co. Kerry, Fr. Senan has certainly found full scope for his energies in the religious life. One of his brothers is the permanent secretary to the Cabinet, having served under both Mr. De Valera and Mr. Costello. Another, the late Fr. Francis Moynihan, went to Australia and became editor of the Melbourne "Advocate," which is Archbishop Mannix's official organ. For some years I had the honour of writing regularly for it as its London correspondent. Its weekly issues provided a lavish and varied contents which exceeded that of the English Catholic weeklies, as decisively as the "Capuchin Annual" exceeds other similar publications. Fr. Senan has devoted special attention to encouraging Irish art. Besides forming his own excellent picture gallery in Dublin, he is, I believe, a trustee of the National Gallery of Ireland.
CAPUCHIN ANNUAL..
Having graduated in Cork, and with his many connections here, Fr. Senan has, as usual, included some numerous features of special interest to Munster in the newly-published "Capuchin Annual" for 1951. It is mainly a record of the Holy Year and among the many descriptive articles is Aodh de Blacam's vivid account of his pilgrimage, which he had just completed before his sudden death. There are numerous impressive and well-chosen illustrations, including the pilgrimage in which the Lord Mayor of Cork accompanied Fr. Senan. Among the portraits by that super photographer, Mr. Adolph Morath, is a particularly good photograph of Canon Duggan of Farranferris. Fr. Gerald, his assistant editor has recently come to the Capuchin House at Rochestown, and Fr. Senan has introduced another Capuchin humorist, the American Fr. Thaddeus MacVicar, whose amusing drawings appear with those of Fr. Gerald, as illustrations and tailpieces.

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NOW and
THEN
AN OCCASIONAL COMMENTARY
By DENIS GWYNN
THE NEW CAPUCHIN ANNUAL
The new issue of the Capuchin Annual for 1952 marks its twenty-first year of publication, and its size is bigger than ever. As usual, it includes a great number of magnificent photographs. many of them scattered among the advertisements, besides those which illustrate the articles. Many of them, done specially for the Annual, are among the best photograph views of places or buildings, in various parts of Ireland, that I have ever seen. It is to be hoped that the Tourist Board will make full use of such expert photographs. But these are only one feature of this prodigious annual publication, with its wide collection of short stories and verse and historical or descriptive essays. Its Editor, Fr. Senan, is a Kerryman, and he has once again given special attention to authors and subjects from his own county. But Cork also figures largely in this new volume. A large portion of it is occupied with tributes, from many angles, to the life and writings of Canon Sheehan, the novelist priest of Doneraile.
TRIBUTES TO CANON SHEEHAN
Canon Sheehan's centenary this year has received less celebration than it deserved; and these tributes to him in the Capuchin Annual help to supply what is wanted. Several of them are essays submitted for a competition with prizes, which are direct reminiscences by various writers, including Mrs. William O'Brien, who knew him well over a long period, and Mr. D. L. Kelleher who, as a young writer, was encouraged by him in his last years. There is a whole section of photographs showing the places where Canon Sheehan spent different periods of his life, at Mallow and at Cobb before he went to Doneraile, at Maynooth and at Fermoy, besides views of Plymouth and Exeter, where he worked for a few years as a young missionary. Canon Sheehan said himself later in life that he had learned more during those few years of missionary work in England than in all his pastoral years in Ireland.
A NEW BIOGRAPHY
A new life of Canon Sheehan by Mr. M. P. Linehan has also just been published by the Talbot Press in Dublin. Mr. Linehan rates his literary merits more highly than most critics would to-day, and the Canon himself would scarcely have sympathised with an attempt to disparage other writers in contrast with his own conscientious and sensitive works. But this book is an invaluable guide to the background of Canon Sheehan's life and studies. Mr. Linehan knows the whole district intimately, and can identify almost every person or place or story in each of the novels. He quotes many passages from them, which show the deep sympathy and the quiet humour and the spiritual quality that make his work so permanently attractive and revealing. We think Canon Sheehan nowadays as symbolising generations of life in County Cork; but in fact he died relatively young. He was in his early twenties when he went as a young curate to Devonshire, and he was not thirty when he came as curate to Mallow. He was only forty-three when he became parish priest of Doneraile, and he died when he was only 61, in 1913.
Cork Examiner
July 22, 1952.
THE CAPUCHINS IN CORK
Among the other contents of the new Capuchin Annual two special contributions are of direct interest to Cork people. Father T. J. Walsh, of the South Parish, is well-known as a scholar and expert on local ecclesiastical history. His account here of the Capuchins in Cork contains a wealth of important information, derived from archives and other sources which are scarcely known even among experts. He traces the advent of the Capuchins to Ireland from 1608 onwards, and gives many fascinating details of their Irish colleges in France, and of the work of such famous later missionaries as Fr. O'Leary and Fr. Mathew. Here, also, the Annual provides many photographs of great interest to illustrate the story. There are excellent pictures of the Irish Capuchin houses in France during the Penal times. And there is a fine photograph of Cove St., Cork, as it now appears, scarcely changed since Fr. Mathew's day. One small house on the left is where the great sculptor John Hogan spent his boyhood, while Warren's Row, opposite, is where Fr. Mathew lived.
JOSEPH HIGGINS, SCULPTOR
A more recent Cork sculptor, whose work deserves to be much more widely known, is also the subject of an appreciation in the new Annual. Fr. Senan has done much to encourage Irish artists, both by introducing them to a wide public through his Capuchin publications, and by collecting examples of their work for the fine art gallery which he has formed in Dublin. But the Cork sculptor, Joseph Higgins died in 1925, when he was still quite a young man; and this tribute to him, with its impressive illustrations, is long overdue. There are several lovely heads of children, and a magnificent head of an old woman. But his most important work was the head of Professor Stockley, which is now at University College, and was cast in bronze from the original plaster model a few years ago. It was done during the year before Higgins died, when he was not yet forty; but it shows his maturity, his power to convey a subtle character, and his free command of his medium. In that year Higgins was awarded the medal for Irish sculptors at the Tailteam Games but he died soon afterwards.
HIS ART TRAINING IN CORK
Several of his sculptures are now in the Cork Art Gallery, including two heads of fishermen, which are so reminiscent of Rodin's virile work. He was born in Ballincollig in 1885, and he got his only training at the Cork School of Art, working there at evening classes. He began modelling in clay, and by 1910 had won various medals and prizes for sculpture under the South Kensington scheme of art education, while he was still employed as a traveller for tea merchants. He then accepted a post as travelling art teacher, which brought him to Youghal and Fermoy and Midleton and other towns, with constant journeys. But he had a natural gift for teaching, and he was able to continue his own creative work. He painted also, both in oils and water colours, though he was principally interested in sculpture. The self-portrait by him, in oils, which appears in the new Capuchin Annual, shows how varied were his gifts, and what simplicity and strength he had already achieved.

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CAPUCHIN
ANNUAL
The Capuchin Annual, 1952. Edited by Father Senan, O.F.M.Cap. (Dublin, Church Street; 21/-).
As the centenary of the birth of Canon Sheehan occurred this year, it is not surprising that a large part of the Capuchin Annual is devoted to the Cork novelist. Almost 100 of the 600 pages in this year's annual consist of essays on Canon Sheehan's life and works. There is also a short poem on him by the late Monsignor Dollard, together with a twenty-page photographic supplement.
Cork readers will be interested in an article on the late Joseph Higgins, a little-known sculptor who was born outside Cork city in 1885 and died in 1925. Higgins's head of Michael Collins, which was carved in wood from sketches done during a meeting in Cork, is, the writer of the article believes, one of the most characteristic portraits of Collins done in any medium. A few illustrations of Higgins's work are given.
"A Spray of Shamrock" is a short but unusual sketch of Terence MacSwiney by Betsy Gray. Memories of W. B. Yeats are revived in a long essay by Thomas MacGreevey. There is a historical contribution by Joseph O'Connor entitled "Transatlantic Springboard."
In this, its twenty-first year of publication, the Annual has maintained the high standard of earlier numbers, thought it is a pity that an annual of its size contains neither a table of contents nor an index.
M. A. R.

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The "Capuchin Annual"
The Capuchin Annual has latterly assumed such encyclopædic dimensions that the reader would need to give the best part of a week to its full consumption. I took my first dip into the capacious contents of the current issue at the week-end, and emerged with a fuller mind, even though my wrists were aching from the weight of the volume. There is a most pleasant little fantasy, based on the idea of Ireland drifting south-westward into the Atlantic, by Mr. J. P. Comyn; there is a lengthy symposium on the life and works of Canon Sheehan of Doneraile; and Mr. Thomas McGreevy makes an account of a bus tour round Ireland the excuse for some affectionate reminiscences, written with the authority of a long friendship, of W. B. Yeats. One feature that I missed sadly from this year's Annual was the humorous black-and-white sketches of monastic life, by Father Gerald, one of the joint editors, which used to do so much to enliven the early pages of the book.
Atlantic History
Mr. Joe O'Connor applies the arguments used by Thor Heyerdahl, of "Kon-Tiki" fame, in connection with primitive South American migrations to Polynesia, to reinforce the thesis that North America was originally discovered by Kerrymen under the leadership of St. Brendan. While this contention will, no doubt, constitute yet one more grievance in the litany of grouses which Corkmen hold against their neighbours, I found Mr. O'Connor's story a gripping one, especially when he recounts the history of the laying of the first trans-Atlantic cable from Valentia to Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, in 1857, and revives the memory of that unbeatable Massachusetts entrepreneur Cyrus W. Field, who backed the project.
Tardy Recognition
The Annual shows its usual interest in the arts, notably, this year, in an illustrated memoir of Joseph Higgins and his works. Higgins, who died in 1925, was one of the unrecognised genuises of his time. Learning his art at the night-classes of the Cork School of Art, he developed such powers as a sculptor that the late Andrew O'Connor (no flatterer) said of his heads of Youghal fishermen: "Grand . . . Rodin would wish to have done them. Any sculptor would feel sure of himself if he could say: 'They're mine.'"
The reproductions of Higgins's work in the text, particularly the lovely lyricism of his child studies, and the character in his "Head of an Old Woman," prove that Andrew O'Connor did not exaggerate. Yet, this sculptor died, never having had a single commission for a portrait bust. There may be a text here for the National Arts Council. It is possible that there are latter-day Higginses, undiscovered and unencouraged, through the country; it is feasible that there may be works of art by forgotten men of equivalent talent, still to be found. The field might be worth exploration, and there is nobody more suited than the Arts Council to undertake the task.

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ARCHBISHOP'S HOUSE
"Garrylough",
Camp Morton,
Man.,
CANADA.
CAMP MORTON, MAN.,
January 6th, 1953.
Mr. Peter E. Kilroy,
The Standard,
Dublin,
EIRE.
My dear Peter,
Our good friend, P. J. Parker, sent me a copy of The Capuchin Annual, 1952, and I was delighted to read there your interview with Brother Mulhall on Canon Sheehan of Doneraile. It is a most interesting story and I very much enjoyed reading it. You have a facile pen and that is a precious possession.
I know of no writer that I admire as much as Canon Sheehan. The first book of his that I read was MY NEW CURATE, when it appeared in the American Ecclesiastical Review. Then I read LUKE DELMEGE and the BLINDNESS OF DR. GRAY. They cannot be surpassed. I was wondering if you could get some one in Ireland who would send me a full set of his books. It would be a priceless treasure.
My 25 Christmas Sermons (1917-1942) are being published. The first copy I receive will go to you. I know you will review them and that will sell the book. The Sermons are all on one topic, but it is rather surprising, there is no repetition.
A thousand thanks for your kind Christmas message.
I'll be in Ireland next summer and I'll be looking ahead to the pleasure of meeting you. May God be with you!
Ever very devotedly yours in Xto.,
+ ALFRED A. SINNOTT.
Archbishop of Winnipeg.

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THE CATHOLIC NEWS, SATURDAY, OCT. 11, 1952
Capuchin Annual Termed Ireland's Cultural Ambassador to the World
THE CAPUCHIN ANNUAL FOR 1952.
Irish Capuchin Fathers, Dublin. 600
pages. $5.00.
By DORAN HURLEY
Chesterton, who delighted so in paradoxes, would have shaken his heavy head in rueful admiration of THE CAPUCHIN ANNUAL, published each year by the Irish Capuchin Province in Dublin. For here is a book, quite properly called "Ireland's cultural ambassador," which has the Apostolic Benediction of Our Holy Father; and yet one of whose eager subscribers was the late Bernard Shaw, notoriously not a man to be flinging his pennies away on other people's writings.
The 1952 ANNUAL, happily just issued in time for every Irish exile's Christmas, is once again a superb collection of stories and articles, of photographs and reproductions of original paintings that magnificently show the Irish way of life in all its phases, cultural, intellectual, social and spiritual. It is 600 pages of sheer, warm delight for those with an Irish heart; it is 600 pages to tear away the cataracts from the eyes of those who, perversely, see Ireland only "in a dark manner." It is a book of the year, rather than of the month, to be treasured and read and re-read for the year between issues; and then, happily, to be delved back into again and again.
This year, Father Senan, the great Capuchin editor, perhaps the most ardent and potent single force in cultural Ireland today, has chosen to commemorate especially in article and photographs the centenary of the birth of Canon P. A. Sheehan of Doneraile. It is a loving tribute, beautifully presented, to Ireland's greatest Catholic novelist.
But THE ANNUAL never confines itself solely on one subject. It is Father Senan's zeal always to provide a cornucopia spilling out riches. So this year, for aesthetic appreciation, there are full page reproductions in color of the Way of the Cross by Richard King, Ireland's greatest liturgical artist; and photographs of the magnificent statuary of the late Joseph Higgins, a sculptor of acknowledged genius. Joseph O'Connor, the distinguished novelist, links Ireland to America in an unusual way with his article on the laying of the first Atlantic cable from Newfoundland to Valentia Island in Kerry.
Chevalier Thomas McGreevy, Ireland's greatest art critic and presently director of the National Gallery, contributes an article of surpassing charm on a bus tour of western Ireland, with beautifully told reminiscences, as he reached Sligo, of the final burial of his friend, the poet, W. B. Yeats. Most signal of the short stories is, without doubt, a delightful fantasy by J. P. Comyn, "The Emigrant Isle" in which the green island itself goes a-roving to the United States as a visiting neighbor.
And Robert Brennan, former Ambassador to the United States, has a story of a friar and a bandit in France. For Father Senan does not restrict the contents of THE ANNUAL to Ireland. Kevin McGrath, the last Catholic student to study at Prague University before its seizure by the Communists, writes of the Catholic Czechoslovakia he grew to love. "Five Days at Fatima" is the intimate story account of a young Irish couple on pilgrimage. Miss K. M. Murphy tells of her travels in Indo-China. And I am only dipping at random.
So it may easily be seen that the 1952 CAPUCHIN ANNUAL very completely fills the requirements of what a French writer has called "a museum without walls." It shiningly fulfills Father Senan's announced ambition that it will be "an effective and willing servant—to make Ireland a noble house great in the eyes and beloved in the hearts of our own people and all peoples."

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PHOTOGRAPHS WANTED
Photographs of Irish interest—private,
general, historical—taken any time
during the past 100 or 110 years are
required by the Editor of
THE
CAPUCHIN ANNUAL
Autograph Letters (a.l.s.) of Irish
interest are also sought by him.
Please write, in first instance, giving
particulars of photographs or letters
offered, to
THE EDITOR,
The Capuchin Annual,
Church Street, Dublin (P.O. Box 105)
CANON SHEEHAN
OF DONERAILE
A generous prize together with a
specially-designed Capuchin Annual
medal will be awarded to the writer
of the best essay on Canon P. A.
Sheehan (1852-1913); entries, not
exceeding 6,000 words, should be
carefully written or typewritten (one
side of page only), and should reach
The Editor The Capuchin Annual,
Church Street, Dublin (P.O. Box 105),
not later than 15th September, 1951.
The prize-winning essay or essays will
become the property of Capuchin
Periodicals, and will be published in the
1952 issue of The Capuchin Annual.

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THE CAPUCHIN ANNUAL
Now well-established as maintaining a high literary standard without being "bookish" in the kind of reading matter provided, and without losing essential Christian simplicity, the Capuchin Annual commands attention in many parts of the world as well as in Ireland. The 1952 issue, which made its appearance recently in the bookshops, is as attractive and informative as any previous issue, writes R. F. M.
It is only latterly that the annual was ready for sale in the shops. There are patrons of the annual—foundation life members, life members and annual members, totalling over five thousand, and each of those is an assured reader. The list of foundation life members is headed by the President of Ireland (Seán T. O'Ceallaigh). The list contains archbishops, bishops and priests, not all of Irish origin, in different parts of the world.
For people long associated with THE ECHO it will be of interest to learn that the opening article in the 1952 annual, "What Became of Jacques Lemaitre?" is written by Mr. Robert Brennan, who was a member of the staff in the early years of the present century. It also contains an essay written by the latest addition to the reporting staff, Padraig O'Dargáin, Wexford.
CANON SHEEHAN
As this year marks the centenary commemoration of the births of two great Irishmen in their respective spheres, William O'Brien, staunch patriotic orator-journalist, and Canon Sheehan, priest and author, it is touching to read an article on Canon Sheehan's friendship with his townsman, from the pen of William O'Brien's widow, who is spending her declining years in her native France.
Mrs. O'Brien's article is one of a symposium on Canon Sheehan from eighteen different contributors. The prize-winning article in this series is from Mrs. Winfrede Nolan, who lives on a highland farm at Tinakilly, Co. Wicklow, a few miles from the Co. Wexford border. She is a Welsh woman married to an Irish farmer. The section of 82 pages devoted to Canon Sheehan includes photostat copies of his personal notes.
The Editor of the annual has a happy talent of discovering much that is rich in Irish cultural pursuits. Among those works to which he introduces the readers this year are the sculpture works of Joseph Higgins, a man who died at a comparatively young age before his name and work were sufficiently known. The photographs, for which T. J. Molloy is mainly responsible, are admirable.
It is not possible in this brief notice to give even a short summary of all that the annual contains. At a guinea the price looks high, perhaps, but there is material for reading on several days and nights in the six hundred quarto pages. The printing is easy on the eye; it is a fine example of the printer's art and is produced by Messrs. John English and Co., Ltd., Wexford.
Is there a fault in the annual? Perhaps the fact that the Index is not easily found, being neither at beginning or end of the printed matter, may irritate the reader who wants to return to re-read a particular section.