Cuimhní cinn a breacadh 1918-19 : an dara cuid

It was shortly before I went to America. Nearly the whole 45 members were present and they over-flowed into a second room so that sitting in the chair I could only see half of them. They were a new lot and several of them I did not know. Father C Brennan of Killarney was present and had a [question] motion in the agenda paper, carefully veiled in some such phrase as “to consider a matter of importance affecting the Gaelic League” or the like. He asked me (botún) as a matter of personal favour to take it out of its due course on the agenda paper, where it was one of the last items. All unsuspecting I asked the Coiste Gnotha’s permission to do this, and having got it I asked Father Brennan to raise his question. [Al] Immediately he got up and standing mid-way between the two rooms so that he could command

them both, which I could not do, he (botún) raised his voice and with the most violent gestures and gesticulations and in the most passionate oratorical manner commenced the most furious personal attack upon myself that I had ever [listened to] heard made on anyone. He addressed the forty or fifty people present as though he were addressing a meeting in the Rotunda, whipping up his own passion as he went on and trying to excite them as he would have done to a man meeting. I listened aghast as the attack developed, but soon sat back in my chair and did not move a muscle or wink an eye-lid after that. [It seems] The occasion for the attack was this. Father Crehan of Riverstown Co. Sligo as well as most Connachtmen were displeased that the Freeman Journal which printed Irish every day, more or less, should have it all in a pronounced

Munster dialect, considering that in Connacht all people read the Freeman but in Munster they generally read the Cork Examiner. This was quite natural on Fr Crehan’s past, as he urged me to go to the Freeman and try to get a place for Connacht Irish upon it. I did not do [it] so however. H[?] claimed that one night Fr Crehan was at the Coiste Gnótha, which happened to break up early, and he stopped Miss O Farrelly Edward Martyn and myself and begged us to look in at the Freeman’s office which we were then passing and ask Brayden the editor to put more Connaught Irish into his paper. I unfortunately allowed myself to be persuaded by him and the four of us went into [to] Mr Brayden’s office at about [one] one o’ clock at night, and had an inter-view with him. He asked what we thought of the writer he had, this was J O Kelly known as sceilg. I

took care to say that we had nothing at all against him, that all we wanted was to open the paper to some Connacht or Northern Irish. We went away after that. O’Kelly lost his place soon after, not because of our [I] asking for Connacht Irish but be-cause he was not giving satisfaction for Brayden. I can quite understand that he was not, for I well remember a momentous occasion where he was sent down to Tuam to report but when the Archbishop of Tuam made a most important pronouncement about the Irish language (botún) every word of which should have been taken down subation[?] and telegraphed to Dublin, he was not in his place to do it, and he had to get a gen-eral impression from me and them of what had been going on. I remember the same kind of thing happening with him at a meeting in

[Imtheactha an opeachcay[?] 1898. 1 story] [Ditto 1899 (7)[?] stories] [Ditto 1901 (an[?]) t-éiriú opda agus [?]seater eile 8 stories] [Ditto 1901 Madra na n-oíche[?] 3 stories] [Ditto 1901 Fionn agus Ioncám 10 stories] [South (botún)]

the South. I believe there was a superior attraction in both cases! 7 buadh[?] san ól. However according to Fr Brennan this ex-emplary young man, who had just married on the strength of his appointment on the Freeman, was ruined for life and thrown out of his employment, young life and all, through the treachery and accusations of me, the President of the Gaelic League, for the other poor deluded people who accompanied me were only my tools, Fr Crehan Miss O’Farrelly, and es-pecially Edward Martyn who did not know what he was doing but came with us blindly etc.[?] When he