Letter from Padraig Ó Caoimh, General Secretary of the GAA, to Fr. Nessan Shaw OFM Cap., expressing his happiness on hearing that the bodies of Fr. Albert and Fr. Dominic will be repatriated to Ireland. He adds: ‘I had the honour and pleasure of serving mass for Fr. Dominic while in Parkhurst. Up to the time of the truce he was only allowed to say it every Sunday and after that daily … We were life long friends … the night before he left Cork and Ireland – he came to see me in a house where I was on the run’. Ó Caoimh joined the Irish Volunteers in 1916; three years later he gave up school teaching to become an officer with the Cork Brigade of the IRA. In 1920 he was appointed manager of the Employment Bureau established by the First Dáil. Soon afterwards, he was captured by the British and sentenced to 15 years penal servitude. He was released in 1922. In 1929 he resigned from his position as manager of a tobacco company following his appointment as General Secretary of the GAA, a position he held until 1964.
Letter from Muriel MacDonough, 50 Marlbourough Rd., Donnybrook, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., apologising for not seeing him when he called to her house. ‘My bell was out of order and it is practically impossible to hear knocks, especially with [her son] Don babbling making an uproar’.
She expresses her regret on hearing of Fr. Aloysius’s recent illness. She wrote: ‘When I asked for you to go and see [her son] Don I had no notion that you were ill …’. She added ‘Please thank Fr. Albert from me and his promise to go and see Don, also for the copy of the Catholic Bulletin which I am delighted to have’. With photographic postcard print of ‘Donagh and Barbara MacDonagh children of Thomas MacDonagh, shot at Kilmainham, May 3rd 1916’.
A letter and signed print of Micheál Ó Ciánain (Michael Keenan), a piper from Shercock in County Cavan, to Fr. Senan Moynihan OFM Cap. His letter refers to a local tradition regarding Andrew Campbell (1711-1769), the Bishop of Kilmore, who was known as the ‘the Piper Bishop’ during the Penal era. Ó Ciánain explains how the prelate ‘disguised himself as a piper’ with the instrument serving as ‘a Bell to call the flock together at a time when no Bell could be heard’.
A letter from Michael Knightly, Press Censor, to Fr. Senan Moynihan OFM Cap., re the restrictions in place of the publication of the number of people employed at any airport in Ireland. (Volume page 70).
