Patrick Kennedy is mainly known for recording the legends, folklore, and folklife of Ireland. Although he wrote many scholarly articles and reviews, he was a modest literary critic who often submitted articles anonymously. His known works consist of personal recollections and re-created folktales, legends, and customs. The Irish peasants of his childhood come alive in his descriptions of school, weddings, harvest homes, priests, parsons, jokes, and songs. His more durable works are collections of Irish stories, legends, and fairy tales that he gathered from the area where he was raised. One of the unique elements of his work is that he recorded in English stories that had been told in Irish for centuries. He is widely credited with preserving Irish idioms in the turn of a phrase, sentence structure, Irish words, love of description, and moralizing commentary. He was widely read during his lifetime. In his notes he...