Muiris Ó Súilleabháin

Ó Súilleabháin was persuaded to write his memoirs by George Thomson, a linguist and professor of Greek who had come to the island to hear and learn the Irish language.

It was Thomson who encouraged him to join the Gardaí (police) rather than emigrate to America as most of the young people of the island did.

[1] While Fiche Blian ag Fás was received with tremendous enthusiasm by critics, including E.M. Forster, their praise at times had a condescending tone.

[1] Such interest was tied up with romantic notions of the Irish primitive, and thus when Ó Súilleabháin tried to find a publisher for his second book, Fiche Bliain faoi Bhláth (English: Twenty Years a-Flowering), there was little interest, as this narrative necessarily departed from the romantic realm of turf fires and pipe-smoking wise-women.

Aged eight, he returned to Great Blasket Island to live with his father, grandfather and the rest of his siblings, from whom he acquired an understanding of the Irish language.