On an Irish Jaunting-Car Through Donegal and Connemara

In the summer of 1902, an American named Samuel G. Bayne boards the SS Columbia in New York and sets sail for a Ireland that no longer exists. This is the Ireland before the Troubles, before independence, before the 20th century's great transformations reshaped everything. Bayne makes his way from the port city of Londonderry northward into County Donegal and westward into Connemara, traversing it all in a jaunting car, that low, open, two-wheeled carriage that was already becoming a relic even then. His voice is wry and curious, prone to dry humor and genuine wonder in equal measure. He sketches the ancient city walls of Derry, pauses at humble coaching inns, gets lost on back roads that wind through bogs and past cottage doors. The Ireland he encounters is rough-hewn, intensely local, and startlingly alive with customs and stories that feel ancient even in their casual everydayness. The book carries the peculiar melancholy of a photograph taken just before everything changes: you read it knowing you're glimpsing a world that would never survive the century intact.