Series 9 - Eóin Ua Cathail letters

46pp

Translation from Irish language to English by Dr Bruce D. Boling (collaborator of Professor Kerby Miller), 1973.

Transcripts (with English translations) made by Bruce D. Boling of two letters written in Irish by Eóin Ua Cathail in Michigan to the editor of An Claidheamh Soluis in Dublin in 1899 and 1902 extolling the United States.
Per Boling to Kerby A. Miller, 1973: ‘Most of my free time has been spent in Houghton, where I've been transcribing the Irish MS I told you about over the phone. It was written by an immigrant from Co. Clare, one Eóin Ó Cathail (John O'Cahill), and consists of three short prose passages (all in complete) and a poem of some 180 quatrains describing a battle with the Indians in which he took part… …O’Cahill and [Thomas] O'Grady were buddies in the Army and, while on a raiding expedition, were captured by a party of Indians. They were intended for the scalping knife, but O'Grady seems to have talked his captors out of such drastic measures, succeeding so well, in fact, that he came away with the chief's daughter. He later returned to Ireland with his Indian spouse, but O'Cahill retired from the Army to settle in Pentwater, Michigan, and give poetic expression to his experience. He has some pretty choice adjectives for the Indians ('roguish', 'miscreant', 'false', 'treacherous', 'without honor', etc.). Thinking that you might be interested, I am enclosing texts and translations of two of the prose passages. They were written sometime in the twenties. My translations reflect the naivete of the author's style. O'Cahill was certainly not unlettered; he knew the traditional Fenian (i.e. Ossianic) lays and alludes to such heroes as Fionn, Oisín, Diarmaid, and Conán Maol in his poem… … O'Cahill also published at least two articles in the Gaelic League newspaper, An Claidheamh Soluis’.