Her maternal uncle was the Traditionalist Catholic Cardinal Michael Browne, who was Master of the Dominican Order and, in his later life, a friend and ally of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
The extent to which the Gaeltacht of her early life was an imagined as well as an actual place has been acknowledged by the poet herself, but her relationship to 'the miraculous parish,' of Dún Chaoin is both the cornerstone of both her poetry and her poetics.
[11] Máire Mhac an tSaoi wrote the famous work of Christian poetry in Munster Irish, Oíche Nollag ("Christmas Eve"), when she was only 15-years of age.
According to de Paor, "Máire Mhac an tSaoi's poetry draws on the vernacular spoken by the native Irish speakers of the Munster Gaeltacht of West Kerry during the first half of the twentieth century.
The combination of spoken dialect enhanced by references and usages drawn from the older literature, and regular metrical forms contribute to a poetic voice that seems to resonate with the accumulated authority of an unbroken tradition.
In the later work, she explores looser verse forms but continues to draw on the remembered dialect of Dún Chaoin and on a scholarly knowledge of the older literature.
Deirtí go mba phioróid é an cainteoir dúchais deireannach a mhair de chuid Bhreatain Chorn, agus gur chónaigh sé I Ringsend.
Mhac an tSaoi had voted against Stuart because of his role as an Abwehr spy and in radio propaganda broadcasts from Nazi Germany aimed at neutral Ireland during World War II.
Mhac an tSaoi's mother was deeply embarrassed by the exposure of the relationship and staunchly opposed the match, as she had long been a close friend of O'Brien's Presbyterian first wife.
In the 2016 film The Siege of Jadotville, O'Brien is depicted by actor Mark Strong as a bureaucratic and criminally incompetent diplomat who is repeatedly outgunned and outmanoeuvred by Katangese breakaway state leader Moïse Tshombe.
They were both arrested by the NYPD, along with Dr. Benjamin Spock and Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg, during an allegedly violent protest outside a United States military induction centre in New York City on 5 December 1967.