He then returned to Ireland and taught at the School of Irish Learning and at University College Dublin.

Bergin did not seem to have felt the need of institutional religion and, during his lifetime, he rarely attended religious services.

By 1897, his knowledge of spoken and literary Modern Irish was so strong that he was appointed lecturer in Celtic at Queen's College, Cork.

[3] He is celebrated in Brian O'Nolan's poem Binchy and Bergin and Best, originally printed in the Cruiskeen Lawn column in the Irish Times and now included in The Best of Myles.

Frank O'Connor, another good friend, describes Bergin's eccentricities affectionately in his memoir My Father's Son.