FROM THE ARCHIVES:Brian O'Nolan, aka Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen, died at the age of 54 on April Fool's day in 1966 – a couple of weeks after the deaths of Brendan Behan and Frank O'Connor. Among the tributes was this one from his long-time friend, Niall Montgomery. –
JOE JOYCE
BRIAN Ó NUALLAIN was a fantastic and wonderful fellow and to say nach mbeidh a leithéid arís ann is putting it mildly; there never was the like of him, certainly not in U.C.D. in the ’thirties, where he descended, like a shower of paratroopers, deploying a myriad of pseudonymous personalities in the interests of pure destruction.
As his own personal self – white-faced, oak-hearted and scorpion-tongued – he was the terrifying chairman of the L. and H. He edited the college magazine and drew for it a cover design in “Celtic” lettering, garnished with interlaced tracery, of such magistral ineptitude that – to his delight – everyone took it seriously.
Inside, as Brother Barnabas, he wrote, in English and Irish, with greater regard for his linguistic needs than for theirs. While he was working on his MA thesis, he devised, wrote, illustrated and insisted on publishing Blather – a magazine, in the military sense of the word, perhaps. The Count Blather and his idiot son, Blazes, both interested in the sale of the wonder-drug, scramo, were contributors. On the cover of the ultimate issue – No. 3? – one saw a dilapidated shoemaker’s shop, downstage centre a well-known shoemaking aid. The caption? – The last of the Mohicans.
It’s misleading to say that he was a born writer, if craven dedication to trade be implied: rather was he a sorcerer, owner of a cauldron out of which he pulled words to clap, like scalding pitch-caps, on the shrinking heads of concepts happy hitherto to be nameless.
Most dazzling was his consistent presentation of uncommon ideas as common sense: the delirium on which he imposed order was very real to him – he hypnotised a generation into believing that it was Ireland. Maybe it was, then.
His satire seemed to spring up not out of bitterness but from helpless, disbelieving enjoyment of the perverse fantasy of conventional behaviour.
Brian Ó Nuallain had a tremendous number of real friends, many of them unsentimental people, who, nevertheless, always spoke of him in a special way. There was nothing noticably ordinary about him. He died before his time and leaves a devoted wife to whom he was devoted. He could have been anything he liked: he liked to be Myles na Gopaleen and last evening the posters said “Death of Famous Irish Writer” and there was snow in April for a man who did his M.A. thesis on nature in Irish poetry.
He would be amused at one’s hope that the news of his death was an April the First canard, he who loved all his own old jokes, particularly that great invention of his student days – the man unable to die in an improperly furnished house: they had no death-bed!