Tales and Sketches Illustrating the Character, Usages, Traditions, Sports and Pastimes of the Irish Peasantry (1845), a collection of twenty-one short prose pieces by William Carleton, often confused with his better-known Traits and Stories (1843-4). Tales and Sketches is built up around grotesquely eccentric members of peasant society, as in ‘Buckram Back, the Country Dancing Master’, and ‘Barney M'Haigney, the Irish Prophecy Man’.