Keywords: 1910-1921, 1920-1921, Anglo-Irish War, Anglo-Irish War, 1920-1921, Cork (Ireland : County), History, History of Irish Politics, Ireland, Irish Biographies, Irish Biography, Irish History, Irish Political History, Irish Politics, Irish question, Personal observations, War of Independence, 1919-1921, West Cork

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Includes the chapters: Taking up Arms / Kilmurry and Carrigadrohid / Lissarda / Flying Column 1921 / Coolnacaheragh / Minor Skirmishes / In Enemy Hands / etc.

Keywords: Eire, Irish History, West Cork

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Donn Byrne (born Brian Oswald Patrick Donn-Byrne) (20 November 1889 – 18 June 1928) was an Irish novelist. He was born in New York City in the United States where, he claimed, his Irish parents were on a business trip at the time, and soon after returned with them to Ireland. He grew up in Camlough, County Armagh, and was equally fluent in Irish and English.
In 1906, when he was 14, Donn-Byrne went to an Irish Volunteer Movement meeting with Bulmer Hobson and Robert Lynd of the London Daily News, where Lynd noticed him, a fair-haired boy, and wrote of his singing. It was through Hobson that Byrne acquired his taste for Irish history and nationalism. (The “taste for nationalism” cited, is contested by Bradley. Many may confuse widespread interest in Irish Language and Byrne’s excellence in the language, his prizes at feiseanna (festivals) with a more revolutionary political movement engaged in by Hobson and other associates). He attended the University of Dublin, beginning in 1907, where he studied Romance languages and saw his own writing published in The National Student, the student magazine. After graduation he continued his studies in Europe, hoping to join the British Foreign Office. It is related that he “turned down his PhD” when he learned that he would have to wear evening clothes to his early morning examinations, which he apparently felt that no true Irish gentleman would ever do. (The latter claim is shown by Bradley to be just one of Byrne’s impossible, if entertaining, fantasies)

He returned to New York in 1911, where he began working first for the publishers of the Catholic Encyclopedia, the New Standard Dictionary, and then the Century Dictionary. In February 1912 his poem “The Piper” appeared in Harper’s magazine. His first short story, “Battle,” sold soon after to Smart Set magazine for $50, appearing in the February 1914 issue. He sold more stories; some of these were anthologised in his first book, Stories Without Women, 1915. He then began working on his first novel, The Stranger’s Banquet (1919). He was a prolific novelist and short story writer from that point on. His novel Field of Honor was published posthumously in 1929. His poems were collected into an anthology and published as Poems (1934).

Despite both his wife’s success as a playwright, and his own increasing popularity as an author, Byrne’s financial straits forced his family to sell their house in Riverside, Connecticut, and return to Ireland. They later purchased Coolmain Castle, near Bandon in County Cork, where Byrne lived until his death in a car accident due to defective steering, in June 1928. A Kilbrittain man Cornelius O’Sullivan who witnessed the incident pulled him from the water and tried to revive him, but to no avail. He is buried in Rathclarin churchyard, near Coolmain Castle. His headstone reads, in Irish and English: “I am in my sleeping and don’t waken me.” (Wikipedia)

Keywords: Coolmain Castle, County Cork, Irish Literature, Irish Local History, Kilbrittain, West Cork

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“In the summer of 1904 I was in the county Limerick seeking the words of a lost song. In the little town of Bruff, where the song was born, Mrs.Fogarty welcomed me to her home on the bank of the lovely river Dawn, or Morning Star. I found in her an enthusiast for the old stories and legends of Bruff and Lough Gur. She told me about the notable banshee Aine and her brother Fer Fi, the dwarf; of fairies in the hollow hills; of a drowned city in the Enchanted Lake; of giants and ghosts, saints’ wells and fairy thorns. She had even in her youth heard the lost song sung. It was not, however, until many years later that she told me about her own people and of her happy childhood spent at the farm beside Lough Gur. It was a story I felt, that should be shared with others, and in 1935 I asked Mrs. Fogarty if she would write her recollections of those days. ………In this way Mary Fogarty@s story came to be written, with her and for her, by her friend Mary Carbery, St.Patrick’s Day, 1937.” [Author’s Message]

Keywords: County Limerick, Mary Carbery, West Cork

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First published in periodical appearance within the Irish Times from 1916 onwards, this is the first and only edition of this work in bookform.

Keywords: Castlefreke, Mary Carbery, West Cork, World War I, World War One

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