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Sean O'Faolain / Hiram Morgan
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Born in Cork 1900, O'Faolain was a southern Irish Catholic. He fought in the 1918 - 1921 War of Independence. He received M.A. degrees from the National University of Ireland and from Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., was a Commonwealth Fellow from 1926 to 1928 and a Harvard Fellow from 1928 to 1929. He served as director of the Arts Council of Ireland from 1957 to 1959, and from 1940 to 1946 he was a founder member and editor of the Irish literary periodical The Bell. The list of contributors to The Bell included many of Ireland's foremost writers, among them Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O'Brien, Frank O'Connor and Brendan Behan.
O'Faolain would have inevitably brought some of his mental and cultural baggage into the writing of "The Great O'Neill", just as Morgan apparently brought his own baggage to the writing of "Tyrone's Rebellion". However, both men were aware of these dangers, and specifically alluded to them in their introductions. To what extent they transcended them, and whether O'Faolain's book is as sloppy and unhistorical as Morgan inferred, is up to the reader to decide.
Extract from O'Faolain's Preface
"Although this book makes no pretentions to be anything other than a popular account of O'Neill's life and times, it could not have been written without a good deal of help from various quarters. I am especially grateful to Mr. J. K. Graham, Queen's University, Belfast, for permitting me to use his thesis on Hugh O'Neill.....indebted to Daniel Binchy, University College, Dublin; to T.W. Moody, Trinity College, Dublin; and particularly to Professor James Hogan, University College, Cork, for their great kindness in reading the proofs....although the responsibility for the weaknesses in the text, and they must be legion, is wholly mine. I am obliged for helpful references and suggestions to Aodh de Blacam, James Carty, Edmund Curtis, James de Largy, G.A. Hayes-McCoy.....
"I would like to conclude with a warning and a confession to my Irish readers. Hugh O'Neill has a traditional fame in Ireland which has long challenged a biography..... No intimate details of this great man's character have come down to us....we have nothing to go on except his behaviour. Since his mind was reticent and conspiratorial the reader must constantly be on his guard in interpreting his behaviour. The traditional picture of the patriot O'Neill, locked into the Gaelic world, eager to assault England, is not supported by the facts and must be acknowledged a complete fantasy. He was by no means representative of the old Gaelic world and had, at most, only an ambiguous sympathy with what he found himself so ironically obliged to defend with obstinacy. In fact he never desired to attack England, and avoided the clash for over twenty-five years of his life.. His life proves once again that, to be intelligible, history must be taken on a lower key than patriotism......"
"The Great O'Neill" Bibliography
"As this book makes no pretensions to being an academic study I do not burthen the reader with a list of all the sources used. If he wishes to study the period himself he might best proceed as follows: the article in the D.N.B., a general history such as that by Curtis, a more elaborate history such as Bagwell's "Ireland under the Tudors", or O'Clery's "Life of Red Hugh O'Donnell". He might then start from the beginning again, and move step by step with the Calendar of State Papers on his right and the Annals of the Four Masters on his left. The problems will then crowd thickly and in trying to solve them the student will soon compile an elaborate bibliography of his own. A knowledge of Gaelic literature is essential. It supplies next to no information but without it one cannot understand the Irish background and point-of-view......"
"The main source of this narrative is the State Papers. This biographer has here used only the published Calendars. The secondary source is the Gaelic chronicle, "The Annals of the Four masters", and other such chronicles; eg. Lughaidh O'Clery's "Life of Red Hugh O'Donnell", or Tadhg O'Cianain's Gaelic description of "Flight of the Earls", or such Gaelic-Latin narratives as Archbishop Lombard's or Don Philip O'Sullivan Beare's. After that come the personal records of English travellers and generals like Fynes Moryson's "Itinerary", or Sir Henry Dowcra's "Narration", or Perrot's "Chronicle".... To be concluded