From An Claidheamh Soluis, July 22, 1905.
Beatha Aodha Uí Néill. Micheál Mhag Ruaidhrí do chum, Uilliam Soirtéal do chuir síos. Dublin: The Gaelic League. Price, 1s. 6d.
Aodh Ó Néill is probably the greatest man of action that the Gaelic race has produced. But it is not in that fact that lies his chief claim to a place apart in the annals of his people. He was a thinker as well as a man of action, a strategist as well as a fighter, a statesman as well as a political leader. Thinkers and doers have arisen in Ireland before Aodh Ó Néill and after him, strategists and fighters, statesmen (one or two) and political leaders; but the combination is found in Aodh alone of Irishmen who have lived within the past seven hundred years. We do not love him as we love Sarsfield and Eoghan Ruadh and Aodh Ruadh and even Seaghán an Díomais; but we feel his greatness, his compelling power, and we stand awed before him. He is the most tremendous figure in our history, and had well-nigh been the most tremendous figure in the history of the world; for he all but overthrew the British Empire. Only one other man has shaken that empire to its foundations as did Aodh Ó Néill. The other was Napoleon Bonaparte.
The book before us is the first attempt to tell the story of this great life to the Irish people in their own speech—the speech of Aodh himself. The same strenuous tale has been told in English by one of the few Irishmen who have ever written English well. Even Mitchel’s brilliant work leaves much to be desired; and it can scarcely be said that in ‘Beatha Aodha Uí Néill’ we have an altogether adequate and satisfying presentation of the complex personality of Hugh,—with his ‘proud dissembling spirit,’ his mastery over the minds and hearts of men, his genius for combination, his patient and far-seeing statesmanship. But we have at least something which we never had before.—a narrative, always graphic, at moments intensely dramatic, and now and then rising to a sheer height of impassioned eloquence, of the greatest career in our annals. To have that is to have much. Philosophical history—the detailed analysis of character, the study of the causation of events, the probing to the heart of things,—will come later on. A book which only claims to be a good narrative should not be decried because it is not something else which it does not purport to be.
Micheál Mhag Ruaidhrí would seem to have assimilated everything that has been written either in English or in Irish about Aodh Ó Néill. He has drawn also on certain traditions of the Connacht hostings of Hugh O’Donnell which still live on in Mayo and Sligo. There is an Irishness about his way of handling his materials which gives his book a unique interest. His style—we write advisedly—is nearer the style of Keating than that of any other Irish writer of our day. We do not know whether he has made a study of Keating or not.—probably not; but, mutatis mutandis, many of his chapters—the first is a good specimen—might easily have been written by the author of Forsa Feasa ar Éirinn. One fault—the undue length of many of the sentences—is to be attributed to the fact that, as may be deduced from the announcement on the title-page, the narrative was dictated to an amanuensis. When one is slowly dictating, sentences are apt to lengthen out, and the conjunction ‘agus’ to intrude itself where a full stop would be better. If the author had been given an opportunity of hearing the book read over to him he would doubtless have split up many of his sentences, and omitted a number of the conjunctions.
It goes without saying that the work is an inexhaustible mine of North Connacht idiom and vocabulary. A Focloir at the end includes most of the unfamiliar words. The literary flavour of the book is unmistakeable, yet the vocabulary is essentially the vocabulary of the people. Michéal Mhag Ruaidhrí, in fact, as he admits in his valedictory note, knows no other; and if, as some have asserted, there is an occasional non-native idiom, the explanation is that non-native idioms are now part and parcel of the spoken language of the people. To cast out of present-day Irish every form of expression that would not have been used by Cormac Mac Airt would be impossible, and, even if possible, perhaps not altogether desirable.
All Ireland, but more especially Connacht, will welcome ‘Beatha Aodha Uí Néill.’