Ó Muirthile is educated at cork, taking a BA in Irish and French at UCC. His Irish is acquired at school and from sojourns in the Gaeltacht of West Kerry. He is a member of a group of poets at UCC in the late 1960s who choose Irish as a creative medium and are closely associated with the modernist poetry journal Innti, founded by fellow poet Michael Davitt. They are influenced by the work of Cork poet Seán Ó Ríordáin, by the musician and composer Seán Ó Riada, and by popular American culture.
Greg Delanty, writing for Poetry International, claims that a fundamental achievement of Ó Muirthile and other members of the Innti group was to adapt the language to a contemporary urban landscape in a way that reflected the counterculture of the sixties.
Ó Muirthile has been described as a poet of immense formal and musical mastery who reads deeply into the classical and neo-classical poetry of the Irish language. He studies French literature as a student and this influences his work. He translates poetry by Guillaume Apollinaire, François Villon, Jacques Prévert and Anne Hébert.
Ó Muirthile’s first collection of poetry is Tine Chnámh (1984). This receives the Irish American Cultural Institute’s literary award and an Oireachtas prize for poetry. He subsequently publishes a number of other collections. In 1996, he receives the Butler Award for his novel Ar Bhruach na Laoi. Several plays by him have been staged. From 1989 to 2003 he writes a weekly column, “An Peann Coitianta,” for The Irish Times. Poems by him have been translated into English, German, French, Italian, Hungarian and Romanian.
Two of Ó Muirthile‘s poems, Meachán Rudaí and Áthas, have been put to music by the Irish/American group The Gloaming and featured on their third studio album The Gloaming 3.
Séamus Ennis (Irish: Séamas Mac Aonghusa), Irish musician, singer and Irish music collector, dies in Naul, County Dublin, on October 5, 1982. He is most noted for his uilleann pipe playing and is partly responsible for the revival of the instrument during the twentieth century, having co-founded Na Píobairí Uilleann, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to the promotion of the uilleann pipes and its music. He is recognised for preserving almost 2,000 Irish songs and dance-tunes as part of the work he does with the Irish Folklore Commission. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest uilleann pipers of all time.
Ennis’s father, James, works for the Irish civil service at Naul, County Dublin. In 1908, James Ennis is in a pawn shop in London and purchases a bag containing the pieces of a set of old uilleann pipes. They were made in the mid nineteenth century by Coyne Pipemakers of Thomas Street in Dublin. In 1912, he comes in first in the Oireachtas competition for warpipes and second in the uilleann pipes. He is also a prize-winning dancer. In 1916, he marries Mary Josephine McCabe, an accomplished fiddle player from County Monaghan. They have six children, Angela, Séamus, Barbara, and twins, Cormac and Ursula (Pixie) and Desmond. Séamus is born on May 5, 1919, in Jamestown in Finglas, Dublin. James Ennis is a member of the Fingal trio, which includes Frank O’Higgins on fiddle and John Cawley on flute, and performs regularly with them on the radio. At the age of thirteen, Séamus starts receiving lessons on the pipes from his father. He attends a Gaelscoil, Cholmcille, and a Gaelcholáiste, Coláiste Mhuire, which gives him a knowledge of the Irish language that serves him well in later life. He sits in an exam to become Employment Exchange clerk but is too far down the list to be offered a job. He is twenty and unemployed.
Colm Ó Lochlainn is editor of Irish Street Ballads and a friend of the Ennis family. In 1938, Ennis confides in Colm that he intends to move to England to join the British Army. Colm immediately offers him a job at The Three Candles Press. There Ennis learns all aspects of the printing trade. This includes writing down slow airs for printed scores – a skill which later proves important. Colm is director of an Irish language choir, An Claisceadal, which Ennis joins. In 1942, during The Emergency, shortages and rationing mean that things become difficult in the printing trade. Professor Seamus Ó Duilearge of the Irish Folklore Commission hires the 23-year-old to collect songs. He is given “pen, paper and pushbike” and a salary of three pounds per week. Off he goes to Connemara.
From 1942 to 1947, working for the Irish Folklore Commission, Ennis collects songs in west Munster; counties Galway, Cavan, Mayo, Donegal, Kerry; the Aran Islands and the Scottish Hebrides. His knowledge of Scottish Gaelic enables him to transcribe much of the John Lorne Campbell collection of songs. Elizabeth Cronin of Ballyvourney, County Cork, is so keen to chat to Ennis on his visits that she writes down her own songs and hands them over as he arrives, and then gets down to conversation. He has a natural empathy with the musicians and singers he meets. In August 1947, he starts work as an outside broadcast officer with Raidió Éireann. He is a presenter and records Willie Clancy, Seán Reid and Micho Russell for the first time. There is an air of authority in his voice. In 1951, Alan Lomax and Jean Ritchie arrived from the United States to record Irish songs and tunes. The tables are turned as Ennis becomes the subject of someone else’s collection. There is a photograph from 1952/53 showing Ritchie huddled over the tape recorder while Ennis plays uilleann pipes.
Late in 1951, Ennis joins the BBC. He moves to London to work with producer Brian George. In 1952, he marries Margaret Glynn. They have two children, the organist Catherine Ennis and Christopher. His job is to record the traditional music of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and to present it on the BBC Home Service. The programme is called As I Roved Out and runs until 1958. Meeting up with Alan Lomax again, he is largely responsible for the album Folk and Primitive Music (volume on Ireland) on the Columbia Records label.
In 1958, after his contract with the BBC is not renewed, Ennis starts doing freelance work, first in England then back in Ireland, with the new TV station Teilifis Éireann. Soon he is relying totally on his musical ability to make a living. About this time, his marriage breaks down and he returns to Ireland. He suffers from tuberculosis and is ill for some time. In 1964, he performs at the Newport Folk Festival. His father gives him the pipes he had bought in 1908. Although most pipers can be classed as playing in a tight style or an open style, Ennis is in between. He is a master of the slow air, knowing how to decorate long notes with taste and discreet variation.
Two events will live in legend among pipers. The first is in Bettystown, County Meath, in 1968, when the society of Irish pipers, Na Píobairí Uilleann, is formed. Breandán Breathnach is playing a tape of his own piping. Ennis asks, “What year?” Breandán replies, “1948.” Ennis says, “So I thought.” For a couple of hours the younger players perform while Ennis sits in silence. Eventually he is asked to play. Slowly he takes off his coat and rolls up his sleeves. He spends 20 minutes tuning up his 130-year-old pipes. He then asks the gathering whether all the tape recorders are ready and proceeds to play for over an hour. To everyone’s astonishment he then offers his precious pipes to Willie Clancy to play a set. Clancy demurs but eventually gives in. Next, Liam O’Flynn is asked to play them, and so on, round the room. The second unforgettable session is in Dowlings’ Pub in Prosperous, County Kildare. Christy Moore is there, as well as most of the future members of Planxty.
Ennis never runs any school of piping but his enthusiasm infuses everyone he meets. In the early 1970s, he shares a house with Liam O’Flynn for almost three years. Finally, he purchases a piece of land in Naul and lives in a mobile home there. One of his last performances is at the Willie Clancy Summer School in 1982. He dies on October 5, 1982. His pipes are bequeathed to Liam O’Flynn. Radio producer Peter Browne produces a compilation of his performances, called The Return from Fingal, spanning 40 years.
Séamus Ennis Road in his native Finglas is named in his honour. The Séamus Ennis Arts Centre in Naul is opened in his honour, to commemorate his work and to promote the traditional arts. He is also the subject of Christy Moore’s song “The Easter Snow.” This is the title of a slow air Ennis used to play, and one after which he named his final home in Naul.
She studies in the school of Old Irish established by Professor Osborn Bergin and is strongly influenced by the Irish Australian professor O’Daly. She later teaches Latin through Irish at Ballingeary and becomes proficient in French, German, Italian and Spanish.
She spends the last £100 of her scholarship on a dowry for her marriage to Sean MacGearailt, later first Accountant General of Revenue in the Irish civil service, with whom she lives originally in Glasnevin and then in Dalkey.
She is a founder member of the radical Craobh an Chéitinnigh, the Keating branch of Conradh na Gaeilge, composed mainly of Dublin-based Kerry people and regarded, by themselves at least, as the intellectual focus of the League.
In August 1904, some six years after the establishment of the earliest women’s hurling teams, the rules of camogie (then called camoguidheacht), first appears in Banba, a journal produced by Craobh an Chéitinnigh. Camogie had come to public attention when it was showcased at the annual Oireachtas (Conradh na Gaeilge Festival) earlier that year, and it differed from men’s hurling in its use of a lighter ball and a smaller playing-field. Ní Chinnéide and Cáit Ní Dhonnchadha, like Ní Chinnéide, an Irish-language enthusiast and cultural nationalist, are credited with having created the game, with the assistance of Ní Dhonnchadha’s scholarly brother Tadhg Ó Donnchadha, who drew up its rules. She is on the first camogie team to play an exhibition match in Navan, County Meath, in July 1904, becomes an early propagandist for the game and, in 1905, is elected president of the infant Camogie Association.
She first visits the Blasket Islands in 1932 with her daughter Niamh, who dies tragically young. In the summer of 1934, she puts the idea into Peig Sayers‘s head to write a memoir. According to a later interview with Ní Chinnéide “she knew and admired her gift for easy conversation, her gracious charm as a hostess, her talent for illustrating a point she was making by a story out of her own experience that was as rich in philosophy and thought as it was limited geographically.” Peig answers that she has “nothing to write.” She had learned only to read and write in English at school and most of it has been forgotten.
Ní Chinnéide suggests Peig should dictate her memoir to her son Micheal, known to everyone on the island as An File (“The Poet”), but Peig “only shook her head doubtfully.” At Christmas, a packet arrives from the Blaskets with a manuscript, she transcribes it word for word and the following summer brings it back to the Blaskets to read it to Peig. She then edits the manuscript for the Talbot Press. Peig becomes well known as a prescribed text on the Leaving Certificate curriculum in Irish.
Ní Chinnéide has an acting part in the first modern play performed in Irish on the stage, Casadh an tSugáin by Douglas Hyde in 1901. She is later author of children’s plays staged by An Comhar Drámuidhachta at the Oireachtas and the Peacock Theatre, of which Gleann na Sidheóg and An Dúthchas (1908) are published. She is a broadcaster in Irish on 2RN, a wholly owned subsidiary of Raidió Teilifís Éireann, after its foundation in 1926 and author of a translation of Grimms’ Fairy Tales (1923). She is president of the Gaelic Players Dramatic group during the 1930s and a founder of the Gaelic Writers Association in 1939.
She soon becomes interested in writing children’s plays, including Gleann na Sidheóg (Fairy Glen, 1905) and Sidheoga na mBláth (Flower Fairies, 1909. Although there is little information available on the staging of her first play, by the time her second children’s play, Sidheóga na mBláth, is published in An Claidheamh Soluis in December 1907, “Éire Óg” (“Young Ireland”) branches of Conradh na Gaeilge have been established in conjunction with adults’ branches. Patrick Pearse in particular voices the expectation that this play will be staged by many “Éire Óg” branches “before the New Year is very old,” thus indicating the immediate take up of such plays. Indeed, a week after the play’s publication, it is staged in the Dominican College in Donnybrook, Dublin, where Ní Chinnéide had spent several years as an Irish teacher.
Ó Muircheartaigh grows up on the family farm and is educated locally in Dingle. In September 1945, he begins studying at Coláiste Íosagáin in Ballyvourney in the County CorkGaeltacht where he trains to be a teacher. It is at this all-Irish language school that his name changes from Michael Moriarty to the Irish version Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh. He says that Irish is his stronger language. In September 1948, he begins the final year of his teacher training at St. Patrick’s College of Education in Drumcondra, Dublin.
In early March 1949, Ó Muircheartaigh, along with ten other students from the college, and several from other colleges, do a test commentary on a hurling match at Croke Park. Each student has to commentate for five minutes in Irish and the most successful is to be selected for further commentary work. Up to this point, he has never seen a game of hurling before in his life. He is the one selected and his first assignment is to provide an all-Irish commentary on the 1949 Railway Cup final on Saint Patrick’s Day.
Ó Muircheartaigh graduates from St. Patrick’s College a little later and also completes a Bachelor of Arts degree from University College Dublin (UCD) in 1952. He also completes a Higher Diploma in Education in 1953. He teaches economics, accountancy and Irish in both primary and secondary schools throughout Dublin, the majority of which are run by the Christian Brothers. He continues teaching up until the 1980s, when he becomes a full-time broadcaster with RTÉ.
For the early part of his broadcasting career, Ó Muircheartaigh commentates on Minor GAA matches, in the Irish language. He also replaces the legendary Michael O’Hehir when he is not available to commentate. Eventually when O’Hehir is forced to retire in the mid-1980s Ó Muircheartaigh takes over as the station’s premier radio commentator. He develops his own inimitable style of commentary, and his accent is unmistakably that of a native Irish speaker. He is a true lover of Gaelic Athletic Association, and it is reflected in the enthusiasm he brings to matches. His unusual turn of phrase makes him a much-loved broadcaster and often imitated character. He becomes particularly famous in Ireland for his unusual turns of phrase in the heat of the moment while commentating. Towards the end of his life, he commentates on RTÉ Radio 1. In 2004, he publishes his autobiography, From Dún Sion to Croke Park.
On March 5, 1988, Ó Muircheartaigh presents the Saturday Live show on RTÉ 1. In 1990, he holds an impromptu interview with Britain’s Prince Edward, after his greyhound had won at the English Greyhound Derby qualifier when he was commentating.
Ó Muircheartaigh’s commentaries for RTÉ Radio 1’s Sunday Sport show win him a Jacob’s Award in 1992. He is also the Parade Grand Marshal for the 2007 St. Patrick’s Festival, having been given the honour by the chairman of the festival in recognition and appreciation of his unique contribution to Irish culture. He is the Parade Grand Marshal for the 2011 St. Patrick’s Parade in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, also in recognition and appreciation of his unique contribution to Irish culture.
On September 16, 2010, Ó Muircheartaigh announces his retirement from broadcasting. The last All-Ireland he commentates on is the 2010 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final on September 19, 2010.
On October 29, 2010, it is announced that the 2nd International Rules test at Croke Park would be Ó Muircheartaigh’s final broadcast as commentator on RTÉ Radio 1. The following day he commentates his final commentary alongside RTÉ’s pundit and former Meath footballer Bernard Flynn.
Ó Muircheartaigh is contracted to officiate at the 2011–2012 Volvo Ocean Race finish in Galway where he commentates on the finish to the round-the-world race, giving it a uniquely Irish conclusion. Sailing is his longtime hobby.
Ó Muircheartaigh writes a weekly sports column for Foinse, the Irish-language newspaper free with the Irish Independent each Wednesday. He is invited to read out a piece in Irish and in English at an event called “Laochra” in Croke Park on April 24, 2016, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising.
In 2007, Ó Muircheartaigh is awarded the UCD Foundation Day Medal. His nephew by marriage, John McGuire, has presented several programmes on RTÉ.
Ó Muircheartaigh dies in hospital in Dublin at the age of 93 on June 25, 2024.
Ó Muircheartaigh is awarded an honorary doctorate by NUI Galway in 1999 for his lifetime service to broadcasting. Shortly after his 90th birthday, he is awarded the only GAA GPA All Stars Award of 2020. No further All Stars can be awarded as competition is suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic and only completed that December.
Barry returns to Bandon in early 1919. He describes in his guerilla days in Ireland a Damascus-like conversion to Irish nationalism on hearing of the Easter Rising while with the Mesopotamian expeditionary force, but he is only accepted into the IRA with considerable caution. Initially tested in intelligence and training work, in mid-1920 he takes charge of the new brigade flying column, which is used both to train officers and to stage offensive actions.
Barry adapts his military experience successfully to the demands of guerrilla warfare, becoming the most famed of column leaders during the Irish War of Independence. In his memoirs, he pours scorn on the obsession of many with military titles and orthodox procedure, complaining of a “paper army.” He stresses the need for spontaneity, initiative, and knowledge of local conditions. “The reality,” he writes, “was a group of fellows, mostly in caps and not-too-expensive clothing, wondering how to tackle their job and where they would sleep that night or get their supper.” (The Reality of the Anglo–Irish War (1974)). He well realises that the war’s character does not permit any close control from the IRA’s GHQ in Dublin, hence increasing the importance of local leaders. His tactics put strong emphasis on speed of movement and on the need to attack the enemy at his weakest point. The column’s ambush successes are small in number but among the best-remembered of the war. He admits, however, that his own and his column’s lack of experience with mines frequently weakened their offensives.
The column’s first successful ambush is at Tooreen on October 22, 1920, followed on November 28 by the dramatic ambushing of a patrol of auxiliaries at Kilmichael while travelling from their Macroom base. A column of thirty-six men, divided into three sections, kill sixteen auxiliaries, with one captured and later shot, suffering two fatalities of their own. Controversy has raged since over whether a false surrender by the British force caused the brutality of some of the deaths. Together with the Bloody Sunday killings of a week earlier in Dublin, Kilmichael has a profound effect on the British military and political establishment, with the declaration in December of martial law for much of Munster and the implementation of wide-ranging internment, together with the authorisation of official reprisals.
After a short period in hospital with a heart condition, in early 1921 Barry leads unsuccessful attacks on Kilbrittain, Innishannon, Drimoleague, and Bandon barracks. The seizure of Burgatia House, outside Rosscarbery, in early February, and the successful resistance made there to British troops, wins much publicity but has little military significance. He is a leading figure in the brutal final stage of the war in the first six months of 1921, which sees widespread shooting of suspected spies and destruction of loyalist property. By March 1921, his flying column, with 104 men, is easily the largest in Ireland, and an explosives expert, Capt. McCarthy, has joined them.
The protracted engagement between Barry’s column and encircling British forces at Crossbarry on March 19, 1921, comes at a time when large-scale sweeps are making life increasingly difficult for the IRA. It consists of a daring and courageous breakout. Crossbarry is the largest action of the war, and Barry is to regard it as even more important than Kilmichael. Soon afterwards, Rosscarbery barracks is successfully attacked by a Barry-led party, representing one of the few successful such initiatives in 1921. Isolated triumphs, however, cannot hide the fact that pressure is increasing on the column, and he becomes increasingly critical of inactive regions. He is later to say that all County Kerry does during the war is to shoot one decent police inspector at Listowel Racecourse and a colleague of his. He is strongly critical also of the lack of assistance from GHQ and of the divisionalisation policy. He visits Dublin in May, travels around with Michael Collins, and is present when two American officers demonstrate the Thompson submachine gun. He is more aware than most of his 1st Southern Division colleagues of the scarcity of arms and ammunition at the war’s end.
During the truce, Barry becomes liaison officer for Munster, riling the British by insisting on his military rank, and criticising the IRA liaison men in Dublin for being overly deferential. He joins the overwhelming majority of the Cork IRA in opposing the Anglo–Irish Treaty but plays a characteristically maverick role throughout the treaty split. His independent attitude is heightened by his dislike of Liam Lynch, the republican IRA’s Chief of Staff, and his continuing respect for Michael Collins. He shows impatience at the long-drawn-out peace initiatives. In March 1922, therefore, he advocates armed confrontation with pro-treaty units over the occupation of barracks in Limerick, and on June 18 he submits a resolution, which only narrowly fails, at the army convention, giving British troops seventy-two hours to leave Dublin.
At the beginning of the Irish Civil War, Barry is arrested entering the Four Courts disguised as a woman. He escapes from an internment camp at Gormanston in early September 1922. For the rest of the war his actions mirror its confused nature. In late October 1922, he leads successful raids on the small towns of Ballineen and Enniskean, and later on Inchigeelagh and Ballyvourney. In December his column takes Carrick-on-Suir, demonstrating the weakness of the Free State army, but his talk of advancing on the Curragh and of large-scale actions does not materialise. There is no evidence that he is acting in accordance with any coordinated plan. By February 1923, he realises that the Republican IRA cause is hopeless and he is involved with Fr. Tom Duggan in efforts to get 1st Southern Division to declare a ceasefire. He journeys to Dublin to put pressure on the intransigent Lynch in this connection, telling Lynch, “I did more fighting in one week than you did in your whole life.”
Barry avoids capture in roundups after the war, remaining on the run until 1924. Unlike many republicans, he does not turn to constitutionalism, remaining strongly militaristic. He is always an unreconstructed republican, though by no means a naive one. In 1924 he becomes attached to Cleeves Milk Co., based in Limerick and Clonmel, and from 1927 to retirement in 1965 is general superintendent with the Cork harbour commissioners. He strongly advocates preserving the independence of the IRA army executive during the republican split of 1925–27. He is instrumental in continuing the drilling of IRA members and is a strong supporter of armed opposition to the Blueshirts.
During the 1930s Barry is arrested at various times for possession of arms and seditious utterances. He promotes an attack against a Freemasons’ meeting in Cork in 1936 and gives the orders for the killing on March 4 of that year of Vice-AdmiralHenry Boyle Somerville. He is opposed to the use by Frank Ryan of IRA volunteers to support the republican cause in the Spanish Civil War and to the proposals of Seán Russell for a bombing campaign in England. To maintain the link with traditional republicanism, he is elected IRA chief of staff in 1937. His plan, however, for the seizure of Armagh city, as part of a direct northern offensive, quickly collapses due to a leak of information, and he soon resigns his position. He forcefully attacks the bombing of English cities in 1938, regarding attacks on innocent civilians as immoral and counterproductive. He enlists in the National Army on July 12, 1940, only to be demobilised a month later. In 1946, he stands as an independent candidate in a by-election in the Cork Borough constituency, finishing at the bottom of the poll. He is more comfortable the following year touring the United States on an anti-partition platform.
In 1949 his Guerilla Days in Ireland is published. It proves a best-seller and has frequently been reprinted. It is well written in a forceful and direct style, one memoir needing no assistance from a ghost writer. Age does not mellow him: lawyers and bank managers are threatened by him over matters relating to his own column, and in 1974 he publishes a fierce pamphlet, angry at perceived slights in the Irish War of Independence memoir of Liam Deasy. He does strive to achieve a public reconciliation with Collins’s memory by unveiling the memorial to Collins at Sam’s Cross in 1966. On the outbreak of the Northern Ireland crisis in the late 1960s, he takes a militant line, castigating the argument that the Six Counties can be brought into the Republic by peaceful means, and asking when had peaceful means existed there. At the memorial meeting in Carrowkennedy, County Mayo, in 1971, he claims that there is a perfect right at the opportune time to take the Six Counties by force. He remains opposed to IRA bombing of civilian targets.
Barry dies in Cork on July 2, 1980. He is buried in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork. Early in the truce of 1921 he marries Leslie Price, one of the most active of Cumann na mBan members during and after the rising. They have no children.
While Barry always remains an influential figure in republican circles, he will be remembered best as the pioneer of guerrilla warfare, the hero of Kilmichael and Crossbarry. His military flair, individualism, and ruthlessness are well suited to the 1919–21 conflict. After that, his strained relations with colleagues and his lack of flexibility reduce his importance. While his life after the revolutionary era appears anti-climactic, he retains much of his charisma. In later years, he is ever willing to remind politicians and historians how far Ireland has retreated from republican ideals. He is often prickly and autocratic yet could be generous to old colleagues of either side of the treaty split. He is arguably the most intelligent but also the most intolerant of the revolutionary leaders.
(From: “Barry, Thomas Bernadine (‘Tom’)” by M. A. Hopkinson, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Diarmaid Ó Súilleabháin, Irish language writer whose chosen theme is contemporary urban life, dies on June 5, 1985. He is acknowledged as an important Irish language modernist. He is also active in the Irish republican movement and a member of Sinn Féin.
Ó Súilleabháin is born on the Beara Peninsula in County Cork on July 29, 1932. His mother, Máire Áine Ní Dhrisceoil, is a primary school teacher and his father, John O’Sullivan, is a small farmer. He marries Úna Ní Chléirigh on October 28, 1954, and they have two sons and three daughters.
Best known now for his literary work, Ó Súilleabháin writes ten novels, two of them for teenagers. Maeldún (1972) is a pioneering Irish novel that explores sexuality. He writes seven unpublished plays but most of them are shown in Damer Hall and the Peacock Theatre. Three plays that he writes include Bior, Ontos and Macalla and he writes a collection of short stories, Muintir (1970). A story from Muintir called ‘D’ is translated into English and adapted for the stage by Vivian McAlister and is performed by the Dublin University Players in May 1977.
Like Eoghan Ó Tuairisc, Ó Súilleabháin “challenged the critical orthodoxy by openly proclaiming that their standards could not be those of the Gaeltacht and by demanding a creative freedom that would acknowledge hybridity and reject the strictures of the linguistic purists.” He and Máirtín Ó Cadhain are considered the two most innovative Irish language authors to emerge in the 1960s. He often writes in a stream of consciousness, and his style influences younger writers. His writing “explores the problem of recovering idealism and cultural wholeness in an increasingly shallow and materialistic Irish society.” He is elected as a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and wins more literary prizes than any other living Irish author.
Ó Súilleabháin writes a collection of poetry, Cosa Gréine, which is published and launched in Dublin in 2013, twenty-eight years after his death.
Ó Súilleabháin is an active Irish republican, particularly in publicizing the republican struggle, and is a member of Sinn Féin’s ruling body beginning in 1971. He spends short periods in prison because of activities related to his political beliefs.
O’Hegarty comes from a family with strong nationalist roots. His parents are John, a plasterer and stucco worker, and Katherine (née Hallahan) Hegarty. His elder brother is Patrick Sarsfield O’Hegarty, the writer. His parents’ families emigrated to the United States after the Great Famine, and his parents married in Boston. His father is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). In 1888, his father dies of tuberculosis at the age of 42, and his mother has to work to support the family.
O’Hegarty is educated at the Christian BrothersNorth Monastery school in Cork. By 1902, he has left school to work as a sorter in the local post office, rising to post office clerk. He is a supporter of the Gaelic revival, Irish traditional music, and Gaelic games. A committed sportsman, in his twenties he is captain of the Post Office HQ’s hurling team. He follows his brother Patrick into Conradh na Gaeilge and eventually the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He is a member of the Celtic Literary Society by 1905 and founds the Growney branch of Conradh na Gaeilge in 1907. A puritanical character by nature, he is a non-smoker and never drinks.
O’Hegarty is a founder of the local branch of the Irish Volunteers in Cork in December 1913. In June of the following year, he is appointed to the Cork section of the Volunteer Executive, and then to the Military Council. In October, the Dublin government discovers his illegal activities, and he is dismissed. Excluded from Cork under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) regulations, he moves to Ballingeary, where he works as a labourer. From there he moves to Enniscorthy, County Wexford, where he lives with Larry de Lacy. On February 24, 1915, he is arrested and tried under the Defence of the Realm Act for putting up seditious posters. But for this and a second charge of “possession of explosives” he is discharged. The explosives belonged to de Lacy.
The Volunteers appoint O’Hegarty as Commandant of Ballingeary and Bandon. During the Easter Rising, he is stationed in Ballingeary when visited by Michael McCarthy of Dunmanway to propose an attack on a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) post at Macroom. But their strength is fatally weakened and, having no reserves, they call off the attempt. In 1917, he becomes Vice-commandant of No.1 Cork Brigade. He works as a storekeeper at the workhouse but is intimidating, and clashes with the Poor Law Guardians.
During the Irish War of Independence, O’Hegarty is one of the most active in County Cork. Like others, he is exasperated with Tomás Mac Curtain’s inactivity and refusal to be more bellicose. One such is battalion commander Richard Langford, who joins with O’Hegarty’s unit to make an unauthorized raid on the RIC post at Macroom. Langford is court-martialed, but O’Hegarty continues to rise in the ranks. When a RIC Inspector is murdered, Mac Curtain condemns the shootings and calls for their end. On March 19, 1920, Mac Curtain is shot and killed in his home in Cork. The coroner blames the British establishment in Dublin, but the police never make any attempt to investigate the killings. Shortly after these events General Hugh Tudor begins the policy of official reprisals.
In January 1920, an inquiry is held into corruption alleged against “Hegarty’s Mob” or “Hegarty’s Crowd” running Cork City. O’Hegarty blames the former mayors for the charges of incompetence but remains on good terms with them.
In a raid on Cork City Hall on August 12, 1920, the British manage to net all the top brass of the IRA in Cork. In an incredible failure of intelligence, they do not identify the leadership as their prisoners. They are all released, including Liam Lynch, and O’Hegarty. Only Terence MacSwiney, the new Lord Mayor of Cork, is kept in custody and sent to England.
On February 25, 1921, the Coolavokig ambush is carried out by the 1st Cork Brigade under O’Hegarty at Ballyvourney village, on the road between Macroom and Ballyvourney. The IRA suffers no casualties; however, the number of British casualties has been disputed to this day.
The brigade commanders in the southern division retain a residual lingering resentment of Dublin GHQ’s lack of leadership and supplies. Seán Moylan, commandant of No. 2 Cork Brigade, thinks good communications with No.1 Brigade are to be vital, but little of this is seen via the organizer, Ernie O’Malley, at GHQ. At a meeting set up for April 26, 1921, when the manual of Infantry Training 1914 is produced, the document raises great anger. The meeting ends in uproar when O’Hegarty, who is “a master of invective, tore the communication and its authors to ribbons.”
O’Malley and Liam Lynch, the general, meet with O’Hegarty in the mountains of West Cork, near a deserted farmhouse, just off the main road. In the retreat that follows, the Irish take heavy casualties and leave their wounded to the good care of the British. These are the “Round-ups” in which the Irish sleep outside in order to avoid being at home when the Army calls. They are told by the Brigade to learn the national anthem of England to avoid arrest.
In East Cork brigade, O’Hegarty uncovers a spy ring. He is ruthless in the treatment of Georgina Lindsay and her chauffeur, who give away information to the Catholic clergy, but is remarkably lenient on brigade traitors within. He is allegedly not too bothered about evidence but is reminded that all executions of a traitor have to be approved by Dublin first.
O’Hegarty becomes more and more aggressive toward the establishment, using tough language to impose his will over the area. He attempts to force the civilian Teachtai Dála (TDs) for Cork to stand down, to give way to military candidates, telling the Dáil in December 1921, that any TD voting for the treaty will be guilty of treason. But Éamon de Valera is decided and overrules any interference with the Civil Government. Like the commanders, de Valera rejects the treaty but has already been defeated in the Dáil on a vote by W. T. Cosgrave‘s majority.
On February 1, 1922, O’Hegarty marries Maghdalen Ni Laoghaire, a prominent member of Cumann na mBan.
O’Hegarty is on the IRA’s Executive Council, but when there is a meeting on April 9, 1922, it is proposed that the Army should oppose the elections by force. As a result, Florence O’Donoghue and Tom Hales join him in resigning. In May, he and Dan Breen enter into negotiations with Free Stater Richard Mulcahy. A statement is published in the press asking for unity and acceptance of the Treaty. During this time, the republicans become very demoralized and ill-disciplined, but they have to gain strength before announcing independence from Dublin. The debate amongst the anti-Treaty IRA command is increasingly rancorous.
The bitter divisions split the anti-treatyites into two camps. Two motions are debated at the Army Convention on June 18, 1922. At first, the motion to oppose the treaty by force is passed. These men include Tom Barry, Liam Mellows, and Rory O’Connor, who are all in favour of continuing the fight until the British are driven out of Ireland altogether. However, one brigade’s votes have to be recounted, and then the motion is narrowly defeated. Joe McKelvey is appointed the new chief of staff, but the IRA is in chaos. While he strongly opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty, O’Hegarty takes a neutral role in the Irish Civil War and tries to avert hostilities breaking out into full-scale civil war. He emerges as a leader of the “Neutral IRA” with O’Donoghue. This is a “loose” confederation of 20,000 men who have taken part in the pre-truce wars but have remained neutral during the Civil War from January 1923. Over 150 persons attend its convention in Dublin on February 4, 1923. By April 1923, O’Malley is imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison. In a letter to Seamus O’Donovan on April 7, he blames Hegarty for all this compromise and “peace talk.”
It has been alleged by the author Gerard Murphy that O’Hegarty had a role in the assassination of the Commander-in-Chief, Michael Collins, in August 1922, along with Florrie O’Donoghue and Joe O’Connor. It is alleged that as members of the 1st Southern Division Cork, they are actually feigning claims of neutrality but remain part of the IRB in order to set up talks towards peace and the cessation of hostilities at the start of the Irish Civil War.
Although probably an atheist during the Irish War of Independence, O’Hegarty returns to the Catholic church later in life. On forming the Neutral Group of the IRA in December 1922, he tries to unify differences in the volunteers between Republicans and the Free Staters. He communicates with the Papal Nuncio during the inter-war years in an attempt to have Bishop of CorkDaniel Cohalan‘s excommunication bill lifted. Instead, he turns to commemoration as a way to earn favour in Rome, with the dedication of a Catholic church at St. Finbarr’s Cemetery. After his wife’s passing, he becomes a close friend with Florence O’Donoghue until his own death.
The Coolavokig ambush (Irish: Luíochán Chúil an Bhuacaigh) is carried out by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on February 25, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence. It takes place at Coolavokig, on the road between Macroom and Ballyvourney, County Cork. A 60-man flying column of the IRA’s 1st Cork Brigade under Seán O’Hegarty, ambushes a 70-man convoy of the Auxiliary Division under Major Seafield Grant, sparking a four-hour battle. Ten Auxiliaries are killed, including Major Grant, and others wounded. The IRA column leaves the area when British reinforcements arrive. After the ambush, British forces stop carrying out raids and patrols in the area.
The IRA flying column had been attempting to ambush the Auxiliaries for two weeks but had always missed them. As they occupy the ambush position over a few days, their position becomes known and a force of seventy Auxiliaries and seven Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) constables move against them, heavily armed with rifles, machine guns and grenades. The sixty-two IRA volunteers include units from the 1st, 7th, and 8th battalions of the 1st Cork Brigade, and are divided into four sections. Apart from commander Seán O’Hegarty, the main IRA officers are Dan “Sandow” O’Donovan and Dan Corkery. The IRA is armed with sixty rifles, several shotguns and revolvers, and two Lewis guns, but significantly, no grenades. The British forces, traveling in eight lorries and two cars, also carry four Irish hostages with them.
Around 8:00 a.m. on February 25, IRA scouts signal the approach of the British force. The British are forewarned about the IRA position however, and approach with caution, when a republican leaving his post turns to run back and is seen from the leading lorry. When half of the lorries come into the ambush position the IRA opens fire. According to An Cosantóir, one lorry immediately turns around and speeds back to Macroom.
Rifles and a Lewis machine gun from the IRA’s No. 1 section, and ten rifles from the No. 4 section, open fire, as they are the only republican units that have a field of fire on the lorries. They then drop to the ground to avoid return fire. Sections No. 2 and No. 3 swing around to the east, on a hillside, in an attempt to encircle the British northern flank, but they can get no closer than 500 yards.
The Auxiliaries are quickly losing ground and taking casualties. Major Grant is killed while rallying his forces. The British forces retreat into two nearby cottages. The IRA closes in and as they are preparing to bomb the cottages, large numbers of RIC reinforcements approach and begin encircling the area. After fighting a half-hour rear guard action, the IRA flying column retreats toward the northwest. The engagement at Coolavokig lasts four hours, until soldiers of the Manchester Regiment arrive.
It later transpires that the Auxiliary forces are just part of a large round-up operation planned for that day which includes 600 British Army troops from Cork, Ballincollig, Bandon, Clonakilty, Skibbereen, Bantry, Dunmanway, Millstreet, Macroom, and Killarney. After the ambush, British forces cease raiding and patrolling the area west of Macroom, effectively handing it over to IRA control. They are reluctant to enter the area and only do so later with a strong force of 2,000 men.
The IRA suffers no casualties. However, the number of British casualties has been disputed to this day. The British claim that only Major (Auxiliary Commandant) James Seafield-Grant was killed during the ambush, and that two other Auxiliaries later died of their wounds. The IRA claims that between 14 and 16 members of the British force were killed. The Digest of Service for the 1st Battalion, Manchester Regiment, records that on March 18, 1921, a party proceeds to Coolavokig to destroy houses believed to have been used by the IRA.
In 1926, Quill emigrates to New York City. After a series of brief jobs, in 1929 he secures employment with the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) as a subway station change-maker. Attracted to socialism and militant industrial unionism by his reading of James Connolly, in 1933 he is one of a small group of workers seeking to initiate a trade union independent of the IRT’s complacent company union. Comprised largely of ex-IRA men linked by membership of Clan na Gael and the leftist Irish Workers’ Clubs, his group soon joins forces with a New York transit-industry organising effort by the Communist Party, resulting in the launch in April 1934 of the Transport Workers Union (TWU).
With a convivial personality and a flair for oratory, Quill quickly emerges as one of the union’s most effective organisers. During 1935 he leaves his IRT job to work full-time as union organiser. In December 1935 he is elected TWU president, a position he holds until his death. By autumn 1936 the TWU has established a solid base on the IRT and intensifies organisation on New York’s other transit lines: subways, buses, elevated trains, and trolleys. In May 1937 the TWU affiliates with the incipient Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). After winning, mostly by large majorities, a series of union representation elections in May–June 1937, the TWU negotiates closed-shop contracts with various New York transit companies, obtaining for its 30,000 members substantial wage increases and benefits and a work-week reduction to forty-eight hours. The ethnic profile of the TWU, which is colloquially nicknamed “the Irish union,” reflects that of New York’s transit workforce, about half of which is Irish born.
First elected to the New York City Council in November 1937 as candidate of the American Labor Party, Quill serves on the body intermittently until 1949. After 1940 he leads the TWU into expansion outside New York, organising in mass transit in other cities, in airlines, and in railroads. Despite modest membership numbers (135,000 by the mid-1960s), the TWU is the United States‘ largest transit union, and Quill maintains a high public profile, owing to his union’s situation in a key economic sector, its base in the country’s largest city, and the colourful and the controversial features of his personality and politics. The 1940 municipal buy-out of New York’s private subway companies and subsequent evolution of a unified civically operated transport system precipitates a lengthy TWU struggle to establish collective bargaining rights and procedures for the transport workforce as public employees. This campaign, by setting precedents for public-sector union organisation nation-wide, marks Quill’s most enduring legacy to the American labour movement.
Quill denies repeated charges that he is a Communist, while retorting that he would “rather be called a Red by the rats than a rat by the Reds.” Communists hold influential positions at all levels in the TWU until the union’s December 1948 convention, when, after months of rancorous conflict over policy, he secures the expulsion from union office of all Communist Party members. His own politics, nevertheless, remain conspicuously leftist in the America of the 1950s and 1960s, as he condemns both the McCarthyite anti-Red witch-hunt and the Vietnam War. Elected a CIO vice-president in 1950, he eschews redefinition as “a labour statesman,” and advocates a national labour party and nationalisation of major industries. A strenuous opponent of racial discrimination by employers and within trade-union structures, he actively supports the black civil rights movement. He is the only top CIO official to oppose its 1955 merger with the conservative, craft-dominated American Federation of Labor (AFL), which he accuses of “the three Rs” of raiding, racketeering, and racism.
Quill’s final battle is his most dramatic. On January 1, 1966, he defies public-sector anti-strike legislation and a court injunction and leads TWU Local 100 into the first total subway-and-bus strike in New York City history, paralysing traffic for twelve days. Arrested on January 4, Quill, who has a history of serious heart disease, collapses during admission to prison and is transferred to hospital under police custody. On January 13 the strike is settled with a 15 percent wage increase, the highest of Quill’s TWU presidency. On January 28, several days after discharge from hospital, he dies of heart failure in his home. He is interred at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York, after a funeral Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, his casket draped by the Irish tricolor.
Speaking after his death, Martin Luther King Jr. eulogises Quill with the following: “Mike Quill was a fighter for decent things all his life—Irish independence, labor organization, and racial equality. He spent his life ripping the chains of bondage off his fellowman. When the totality of a man’s life is consumed with enriching the lives of others, this is a man the ages will remember—this is a man who has passed on but who has not died. Negroes had desperately needed men like Mike Quill who fearlessly said what was true even when it offended. That is why Negroes shall miss Mike Quill.”
Quill marries Maria Theresa O’Neill of Cahersiveen, County Kerry, in 1937. They have one son. Maria dies in 1959. He then marries Shirley Garry (née Uzin) of Brooklyn, New York, his long-serving administrative assistant, in 1961. They have no children. The Michael J. Quill Centre at Ardtully, Kilgarvan, County Kerry, houses a commemorative museum.
(From: “Quill, Michael Joseph” by Lawrence William White, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie | Pictured: Irish-American Trade Unionist Mike Quill during a visit to the White House in 1938)
Seán Ó Riada, Irish composer and arranger of Irish traditional music, dies in London, England on October 3, 1971. Through his incorporation of modern and traditional techniques he becomes the single most influential figure in the revival of Irish traditional music during the 1960s.
Ó Riada’s career begins in 1954 as a music director at Radio Éireann, after which he works at the Abbey Theatre from 1955 to 1962. He lectures in music at University College Cork from 1963 until his death in 1971. He leaves a lasting influence as founder and director of the ensemble Ceoltóirí Chualann beginning in 1961. Ó Riada becomes a household name in Ireland through his participation in Ceoltóirí Chualann, compositions, writings, and broadcasts. His best-known pieces in the classical tradition include Nomos No. 1: Hercules Dux Ferrariae (1957), but he becomes particularly famous for his film scores Mise Éire (1959) and Saoirse? (1960).
In 1963 Ó Riada is appointed lecturer in music at University College Cork. He moves to Ballyvourney, and not Cúil Aodha (a common misconception) in West Cork, an Irish-speaking area, where he establishes Cór Chúil Aodha, a male voice choir.
He becomes involved in Irish politics and is a friend of several influential leaders. Ó Riada drinks regularly at a local pub which still advertises itself as being his local. He develops cirrhosis of the liver. He is flown to King’s College Hospital in London for treatment and dies there on October 3, 1971, two months after his 40th birthday. He is buried in St. Gobnait‘s graveyard, Baile Bhuirne, County Cork. Willie Clancy plays at his funeral.
Two schools are named “Scoil Uí Riada” after him – a Gaelscoil in Kilcock, County Kildare, and another in Bishopstown, Cork City. In 2008, a life-sized statue is erected in the grounds of Sépéil Naomh Gobnait, Cúil Aodha.
seamus dubhghaill 