Life
1880-?; b. Maghera, Co. Derry, br. of Mrs Concannon; solicitor in Ballycastle,
Co. Antrim and in Co. Derry; began as Redmondite but later stood as Sinn
Féin candidate in 1918; became district justice in Letterkenny,
Co. Donegal, being the first appointed by the Free State; extracts from
unpublished autobiography appeared in The Irish Times, 1967; wrote
The Yarns of a Country Attorney (1917); The Next Time, a
story of forty-eight (1919); Memoirs of Men, Places, &c.; The
Life of John Mitchel; and plays incl. Twilight Reveries and
The Pope at Killybuck (performed in Ballycastle by Dalriada Players,
1915). IF/2 DUB
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Notes
Keith Jeffrey, ‘Irish Culture and the Great War’, in Bullán
(Autum 1994), p.87, comments on Going West, a one-act play set at
Mons, Aug.-Sept. 1914, in which Irish soldiers arguing about politics
and religion in a French farmhouse are captured by Germans and taken out
to be shot; first played in Derry in 1915, and popular with amateur groups
thereafter; ‘the political subtext is clear enough’ (p.93.)
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919),
lists The Yarns of a Country Attorney (Dublin: Gill 1917) [includes
story of Orangemen and AOH swapping drum for celebrations], and The
Next Time: A Story Of Forty-Eight (Dublin: Gill 1919), [ tale
of Art O’Donnell, ed. Clongowes, becomes Young Irelander; incl. Famine
scenes; front. of Ballingarry] 242pp. IF2 adds Our Wee Town (Dublin:
Talbot Press 1928), stories [humorous account of town and its institutions,
deals with rivalry between Orangemen and Catholics].
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)