As I Roved Out: A Book of The North (Being a Series of Historical Sketches of Ulster and Old Belfast)

'When Cathal O'Byrne roves out he displays all the adaptability of the Wellsian time-machine, going backwards and forwards along the road the centuries have traveled, finding by-ways and nooks and angles and old houses and forgotten hillsides where stories are remembered, where the passing of some person is still spoken of.'...he has a particular gift for taking some detail out of the past, wrapping it around with his own attractive whimsicality, and passing it on, preserved in that way, for the delight of other men. He does not write history in the usual way. He walks backwards into the past, and the reader walks with him.'...I can imagine no more pleasant way of remembering or returning to or learning for the first time a thousand interesting things about Ireland.'...This is a book to buy and keep convenient, to return to again and again, savouring the flavour of a story or character delicately presented, looking through a small window into the past that made us what we are.'-- Irish Bookman