He and his sister, Síle Ní Chéileachair, published an influential collection of short stories, and he was also notable as a biographer and travel writer.
He was born in Cúil Aodha in West Cork and was raised in an environment in which Irish was the family language.
He was teaching in a Christian Brothers school in Dublin when the Education Department recruited him to work on the English-Irish dictionary edited by Tomás de Bhaldraithe (published 1959).
He attended a course given by the writer Daniel Corkery in Cúil Aodha on the art of the short story, and in 1955 he and his sister Síle published a jointly written and well-received collection of 14 stories called Bullaí Mhártain, with both rural and urban settings.
[4] He also wrote Dialann Oilithrigh, an account of a pilgrimage to Rome, described by critics as being not a traditionally pious description but a lively and stylish diary with clear insight into the author’s mind.