Life
b. 1883-?; b. Belfast; ed. Quaker School, Lisburn; Belfast YMCA, converted to Catholicism; joined Irish Volunteers and was interned; edited The Irishman; wrote letter to the Press declaring he had reverted to Unionism in Spring of 1918; settled in England after 1920, and edited Plain English, and then Plain Speech; issued A Short History of Celtic Philosophy (1920), arguing that Irish thinkers from the Druids and Johannes Scottus Eriugena to Berkeley and Hutcheson were in a single idealist tradition. DIW IF DUB
Works
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Quotations
Unknown Immortals in the Northern City of Success (1917): ‘There is a doubt about his origin, and there is a greater doubt about his destiny. No one ever saw the fish-man begin his day of song, because his day never ends. He carries curious treasures, and he is full of wisdom. His garments cling about him, and his eyes are guarded from the light. / No man can tell his age, and he is without kith and kin in the world.’ (Q.p.; quoted by Fionntán de Brun, in ‘Temporality and Revivalism’ [UU Research Series, April 2011].)
References
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances and Folklore [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), supplies the biographical details but lists only Unknown Immortals, [being] studies of fantastic types, some in narrative form.
British Library hols A Cure for Cant, satire on the atomic bomb [verse] (JMcQ 1946), 24pp.; French Love (Cecil Palmer 1929), 286pp.; A Letter to Coulson Kernahan (Brighton: J Beal and Son 1937), 14pp.; New Poems and a Preface (Burns, Oates, & Co. 1927), viii, 70pp.; A Short History of Celtic Philosophy, with notes by Prof. Eoin McNeill (Dundalk: Tempest; Edinburgh: TN Foulis 1920), 116pp.; Sinn Féin (Belfast: R Carswell & Son 1920), 72pp.; Sayings from a Ulster Valley (London: Grant Richards 1920), 95pp. [port.]; Unknown Immortals in the Northern City of Success (Talbot; London: T Fisher Unwin 1917), 96pp.; Unconquerable Ulster (Belfast: R Carswell & Son 1919), 98pp.; as A. Newman, The Pessimist, A Confession (London: David Nutt 1914), 312pp. [End].
Notes
Forest Reid: Pim’s Short History of Celtic Philosophy was caustically reviewed by Forrest Reid, suggesting that it was ‘improbable that the Druids had thought out a profound philosophy of their own’, adding that myths are an unsatisfactory pool in which to fish for philosophy since ‘you may catch something, but other fishers come along, fishers with quite different views, and are invariably equally successful.’ (Notes and Impressions, Mourne Press 1942, p.24.)
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