|
Life
[fl. 1956]; b. Co. Westmeath; travelled home from Limerick to raise support fro the Rising; arrested in Limerick, 1916, and detained in England; his autobiography, B’fhiú an braon fola (1958) spans his involvement in the Rising, including espionage activites at Michael Collin’s behest, and continues to the outbreak of the civil war, with an account of how the flying column in East Limerick was built up in the Anglo-Irish war; also an Irish language text-book, Gaeilge gan dua (1956).
Criticism
See Philip O’Leary, Irish Interior: Keeping Faith with the Past in Gaelic Prose 1940-1951 (UCD Press 2009), 656p. [deals with Ó Grianna, Seán Mac Maoláin, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, et al.]
Works
Autobiography, B’fhiú an braon fola (Baile Átha Clíath: Sáirséal agus Dill 1958; 1972), 193pp. [ill., map on front endpapers by Ailbe Ó Maoileóin]; English trans. by Patrick J. Twohig as Blood on the Flag (Ballincollig, Co. Cork: Tower Books, 1996), [with glossary of names and explanatory notes].
Commentary
Oliver Snoddy, ‘Notes on Literature in Irish Dealing with the Fight for Freedom’, in Éire-Ireland, 3, 2 (Summer 1968), remarks that after his arrest in Limerick in 1916, a policeman threatened to kill Ó Maoileóin unless he replied in English to the questions asked (p.146).
[ top ]