Neil McBride (poet)

Some titles include: "The Hills of Donegal",[3] "Noreen Bawn" (1910),[4] "The Castle of Doe",[5] "Marble Hill" and "Mo Chró Beag ag Bun Chnoc a' Tighe" ("My wee shack below Crockatee") [6] McBride was a farmer by trade and all business carts were required to display its owner's name in English.

On the evening of 11 March 1905, returning home from the Dunfanaghy Fair, in a nearby town, McBride was stopped and questioned by an English 'bobby' who fined him one shilling for having 'illegible' (Irish) writing on his donkey cart.

One of its members, attorney Patrick Pearse, seeing the opportunity to champion Irish independence, agreed to defend McBride, pro bono.

The case was lost, but it inspired Pearse in his endeavors as a political activist and spawned a national campaign to change British government policies towards the Irish language.

[10] Pearse wrote about the court's decision in his 27 June 1905 column in the Gaelic League newspaper, An Claidheamh Soluis: "...it was in effect decided that Irish is a foreign language on the same level with Yiddish."