![]() ![]() The result, Twenty Years a-Growing, was acclaimed nationally on its publication in 1933. It was the success of Tomás Ó Criomhthain’s autobiographical book The Islandman, combined with the encouragement of his friend George Thomson, that prompted Muiris to undertake his own account of his formative years on the Blaskets. He was greatly aided in this by his grandfather, Eoghan (Daideo) Ó Súilleabháin, a gifted storyteller who developed a great affection for the boy. When he rejoined his family on the Island he spoke only English, but quickly became fluent in Irish. ![]() But he steadily improved his writing abilities until he was able to produce his two best known works Allagar na hInise (1928), and An tOileánach (1929), in his own hand.Īs works of high literary merit coming out of an oral culture, they are triumphs of determination to master the written word – to leave a record, as he wrote in the closing lines of An tOileánach, ‘of what life was like in my time and the neighbours that lived with me’.įollowing the death of his mother, Muiris spent the first six years of his life in Dingle. His first major book, Seanchas ón Oileán Tiar, published in 1956, was dictated to Robin Flower. He received great encouragement from the scholars Carl Marstrander and Robin Flower and later as editors from Brian Ó Ceallaigh and Pádraig Ó Siochfhradha. Having been taught to write only English in school, he was faced in his middle years with the challenge of learning to write in his native Irish in order to record the life and history of his people. A farmer and fisherman, he lived all his life on the Island. Perhaps the greatest of the Island writers. ![]()
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