AS IT PASSED HIM HE THOUGHT HE HEARD IT SAY IN AFURIOUS WHISPER, “STILL ALIVE!”—Page 25.
[Frontispiece.
The Watcher
And Other Weird Stories
by
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
With Twenty-one Illustrations
by
Brinsley Sheridan Le Fanu
LONDON
DOWNEY & CO.
12, York Street, Covent Garden
LONDON:
PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LD.,
ST. JOHN’S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL, E.C.
PREFACE.
Most of the tales in this volume were written priorto the publication of “Uncle Silas,” which is, perhaps,the novel by which my father is best known. Allthe stories, with the exception of “The Watcher,”were included in “The Purcell Papers,” edited byMr. Alfred Perceval Graves after my father’s death,and published by Messrs. Bentley.
It may be of interest to point out that the centralidea in the story entitled “Passage in the SecretHistory of an Irish Countess” is embodied in “UncleSilas.”
When “The Purcell Papers” were appearing inThe Dublin University Magazine my father suppliedthe following note, which was reproduced by Mr.Graves in his edition of the book:—
“The residuary legatee of the late Francis Purcell, who hasthe honour of selecting such of his lamented old friend’s manuscriptsas may appear fit for publication, in order that the lorewhich they contain may reach the world before scepticism andutility have robbed our species of the precious gift of credulity,and scornfully kicked before them, or trampled into annihilationthose harmless fragments of picturesque superstition which it isour object to preserve, has been subjected to the charge of[vi]dealing too largely in the marvellous; and it has been half insinuatedthat such is his love for diablerie, that he is content towander a mile out of his way in order to meet a fiend or agoblin, and thus to sacrifice all regard for truth and accuracy tothe idle hope of affrighting the imagination, and thus panderingto the bad taste of his reader. He begs leave, then, to takethis opportunity of asserting his perfect innocence of all thecrimes laid to his charge, and to assure his reader that he neverpandered to his bad taste, nor went one inch out of his way tointroduce witch, fairy, devil, ghost, or any other of the grimfraternity of the redoubted Raw-head-and-bloody-bones. Hisprovince touching these tales has been attended with nodifficulty and little responsibility; indeed, he is accountable fornothing more than an alteration in the names of persons mentionedtherein, when such a step seemed necessary, and for anoccasional note, whenever he conceived it possible innocentlyto edge in a word. These tales have been written down by theRev. Francis Purcell, P.P., of Drumcoolagh; and in all theinstances, which are many, in which the present writer has hadan opportunity of comparing the manuscript of his departedfriend with the actual traditions current amongst the familieswhose fo