Books: Poor, Dear, Dead Men

DRUMS UNDER THE WINDOWS (431 pp.) —Sean O'Casey—Macmillan ($4.50).

Ah, yes, at that time Dr. Douglas Hyde ("make way there, yous, keep back, keep back, give him space there") was a famous, fine man. Playwright Sean O'Casey, now 65, remembers that Dublin gawked and said wasn't Hyde the grandest champion the glorious Irish language had ever known, although to be sure he hardly spoke a word of it himself. Indeed, a famous man, a "sure sage, with almost all the priests applaudin' "; and him a Protestant, too ("make way, there—silence—"). And standing...