Last evening I heard from the Burns Library at Boston College, which houses their Irish Collection. I had queried them on a MacSwiney biography(see below) as to his marriage and children, in regards to the line in the song:"If you meet my little daughter...". The answers were as follows:

In the Acknowledgement: "Particular gratitude must be expressed by me to Maire(accent on the a) MacSwiney Brugha, Terence MacSwiney's daughter and only child."

On pg. 90 Costello writes"On 8 June 1917, the day after Muriel's 25th birthday, they were married in the Catholic Chapel in the English town of Bromyard."

On pg. 99 Costello writes"On 23 June 1918, Muriel gave birth to a baby girl. She was named Maire after Terence MacSwiney's sister."

It is assumed, from the acknowledgement, that MacSwiney's daughter was still alive shortly before the book went to press in 1995. She gave Costello permission for quoting from her father's works, and the acknowledgement appears to be addressed to her as still living.

What the above tells us is that, if the reference to a little daughter is specifically for MacSwiney, then, at least, it is absolutely historically correct. I will discuss this more in my weekend post.

At this time, what I plan on doing is to outline, possibly this weekend or shortly thereafter, everything that has been learned on this subject in one or two posts. Once that is done, I welcome your posts on whether you agree or disagree. A few of you still have some outstanding questions in my posts. If you could answer them I would appreciate it. In addition, I may send a personal message to a couple of you.

In the meantime, here are the major items that remain oustanding for me:

1. I have some 20 print sources, in my possession, both Irish and CW, that I want to check. 2. I have an inter-library loan request(out of print books) for the two MacSwiney biographies, which may take 2-4 weeks.

3. I am still awaiting responses from Duke music librarian(CW), the director of the Irish Music program at Boston College, and several universities in Ireland.

Despite what is stated in 2 & 3 above, I will still do the summary post(s) described above. If anything comes in, after the summary, that is important and beneficial, I will include it in later posts. I am particularly interested in learning whether either of the biographies mentions the Irish song, and whether there are specific items showing it was written for MacSwiney.

This way we can start to put this question to rest and move on to other subjects. At this time I would just like to say thanks to each of you that bothered to do the research and post the information.

Regards,

Rambler

The biography mentioned above is:

Enduring the Most: The Biography of Terence MacSwiney

Author: Dr. Francis Costello

Published: Ireland and / or England, 1995