=MACGILL, Patrick.= “The Navvy Poet.” B. Glenties, Co. Donegal, 1891. Ed. at National school until he was twelve. At fourteen began to write verse for the DERRY JOURNAL. Soon after set out for Greenock with 10_s._ in his pocket. “Since then I have done all sorts of things, digging, draining, farming, and navvying.” In 1912 was a plate-layer on the Caledonian Railway.—(I.B.L., III., p. 71). His poems are _Songs of a Navvy_, _Gleanings from a Navvy’s Scrap Book_, and _Songs of the Dead End_. Is now a soldier in the London Irish Rifles, and has written a good account of military life in _The Amateur Army_. A series of sketches from the firing line, entitled _The Red Horizon_, is in preparation. ⸺ CHILDREN OF THE DEAD END. Pp. 305. (_Herbert Jenkins_). 6_s._ 1914. “Most of my story is autobiographical.”—(_Foreword_). It opens in the Glenties with a faithful picture of the people and their hard life. The scene then shifts to Scotland and depicts the toils and temptations that beset the men, and especially the girls, in their sordid and insanitary surroundings. The hero goes on tramp with “Moleskin Joe,” a philosophic vagabond, finely described; and the shifts they are put to and the scenes they come through all bear the mark of truth, as does the wild life led by the navvies at Kinlochleven. The description of these scenes in a London newspaper led to his employment on the press. The hero’s love for Norah Ryan is purely and touchingly delineated, and, save for one unhappy gibe at the P.P., the book is unobjectionable. ⸺ THE RAT PIT. Pp. 308. (_Jenkins_). 1915. The story of Norah Ryan, the heroine of _The Children of the Dead End_, from her childhood in Western Donegal to her death, a woman of the streets, in a Glasgow slum. A heartrending story from start to finish, with scarcely a gleam of cheer. The Author has exceptional powers of observation and gifts of description, and the book is extraordinarily realistic. But the realism and the sombreness being exclusive, the effect is exaggerated even to falseness. Farley McKeown is impossibly villainous, the picture of the wake revolting because undiscerning, Norah’s innocence overdrawn. Yet on the whole the Author’s claim that it is a transcript from life, life seen and lived by him, is doubtless well sustained. There are several needless sneers at the priests, _e.g._, p. 286, which is wantonly unpleasant. The Author is not prurient, but he describes plainly and vividly scenes in Glasgow brothels. Good picture of the conditions of life of the Irish migratory labourers. =[M’GOVERN, Rev. J. B.]; “J. B. S.”= Of St. Stephen’s Rectory, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester. An enthusiast for Irish archæology and a frequent contributor on his favourite subject to N. & Q., CORK ARCHAEOL. JOURNAL, the ANTIQUARY, &c.