Not so many people who saw the return of that splendid film Rotha Mor an tSaoil a week or two ago can have known the man who told the story so vividly - Micky MacGowan of Gortahork, or Clognaneely, if you wish, in Donegal. From the hiring fairs of Ireland to the migrant days in Scotland, the steel mills of Bethlehem in the United States and finally the gold mines of the Klondyke, which gave him the money to buy a fine house back home. First we owe thanks to Sean O hEochaidh of The Irish Folklore Commission, who took down some of his memories and later persuaded him to work on them with him to form a running story. Valentin Iremonger, in a lucid translation into English wrote, to open the book: "Sean O hEochaidh took down this story. Proinsias O Comluain edited it for publication in Irish; to both of them the translator offers this English version." The narrator of the film was Aindreas O Gallchoir; no better man.
Not many will remember the live Micky, but an old friend, now long gone, had two impressions vividly in his mind: first the grand way in which he would sweep visitors into his house, gracious, warm yet almost seigneurial in his dignity; then, of course, his passion for the language. "I remember," he would say, "when we were working in the steel mills of America, there were mostly Irish and Poles to do the hard jobs. The Poles spoke their own language among themselves. Many of our people abandoned our own tongue for English. Ach!" And if he didn't spit, you felt he would have liked to. He was patient with learners, but would always try to turn their questions into Irish first, for their benefit, and encourage them to follow. Our friend was, unusually at the time, for a month or so the only pupil of the Ulster College, just down the road. He was staying with Micky and family and was spoiled. He recalled the great swing of the arm as Micky bade him draw closer to the fire where now and then there was a flicker as a greasai na tine made its flight.
That excellent historian who died too early, E.R.R. Green, was so taken with the man and the place that he used to go up there from Trinity College in term breaks throughout the winters. Mickey recalled many visitors including Casement, Eoin MacNeill, Seamus Delargy and "our own" Seamus O Searcaigh. In 1906 he met Patrick Pearse. They walked the way a little together. "You'll come back to us next year?" He was silent for a minute. "I'll come back again, if it's the will of God." Micky said: "I never saw him again."
PS: Valentin Iremonger's translation is The Hard Road to Klondyke.