[1] His great-grandfather, Seán Ó Huiginn, was a poor scholar from County Tyrone who was travelling to Munster before he encountered a group of men who were rushing to Tara to fight in the Rising of 1798.

His father and uncles were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and took part in the abortive Fenian Rising, and later were supporters of Charles Stewart Parnell.

Raleigh taught his students Irish history and numerous patriotic ballads such as "My Land" by Thomas Davis, which undoubtedly had a lasting impact on O'Higgins.

When he was twelve, he had aspirations of becoming a journalist but for a poor family in rural Ireland, such things were unheard of, and so when he left school at fourteen, he became a draper's apprentice at nearby Clonmellon.

One of the first poems he wrote, at the age of seventeen, was a eulogy dedicated to Father Eugene O'Growney, an Irish language activist and Gaelic scholar whom O'Higgins admired greatly.

It was during his recuperation at home that he co-founded the local hurling club, whose grounds were later named in his memory (Páirc Uí hUigín).

During this time he founded Coláiste Uí Chomhraidhe, an Irish language college in Carrigaholt, County Clare.

These works were commended by the Bishop of Killaloe, the Sinn Féin-supporting Michael Fogarty, as being 'full of simple and profound religious feeling'.

On Easter Monday of 1916 he was in a group of Volunteers who were held at 41 Parnell Square as reserves, on account of their age, health or physical condition.

During the Irish Civil War, he was imprisoned in Oriel House, Mountjoy Jail and Tintown and went on hunger strike for twenty-five days.

[citation needed] In December 1938, O'Higgins was one of a group of seven people, who had been elected to the Second Dáil in 1921, who met with the IRA Army Council under Seán Russell.

[10] From the late 1920s, he ran a successful business publishing greeting cards, calendars and devotional materials decorated with Celtic designs and O'Higgins' own verses.