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“I cannot endure these frequent fits of terror much longer.”
Written in Belfast and Bangor during the partition of Ireland, the six strange stories comprising Conall Cearnach’s The Fatal Move are unusual documents of the time. “Cearnach” was the pseudonym of F. W. O’Connell, a peculiar Protestant divine, linguist and Irish language scholar, oddball essayist, and early national broadcaster. His sole fiction collection showcases a wide scope: the conte cruel, the ghost story, the locked-room mystery, and the science-fictional satire. What unifies the stories is O’Connell’s playful, outward-looking perspective, inspired by his love of the diverse cultures and languages of the world and his home country in equal measure. A unique figure in Irish life, Cearnach’s character is perhaps more present in these stories than the anxieties of the time in which they were written. For this volume, Reggie Chamberlain-King provides an extensive introduction examining O’Connell’s life and works.
Contents
"F. W. O'Connell: Master of Strange Tongues"
Reggie Chamberlain-King
Stories
"The Fatal Move"
"The Vengeance of the Dead"
"The Fiend That Walks Behind"
"The Homing Bone"
"Professor Danvers’ Disappearance"
"The Rejuvenation of Ivan Smithovitch"
Selected Essays
"Dream Stuff"
"Sleeplessness"
"The Nervous Child"
"The Language of the Future"
"Plain Smith"
"Ptenanthropic War"
"Cuchulainn and America"
"The Irish Dante"
"Sources"
"Acknowledgements"
Feardorcha Ó Conaill or Frederick William O'Connell (1876 – 1929) was a clergyman, academic, lecturer writer, and was best known translator to and from Irish often under the pen name Conall Cearnach (after the legendary Ulster hero . He is known especially for editing the work of Peadar Ó Laoghaire.
Ó Conaill was born in Newtown, An Líonán, Conamra , county Galway to William Morgan O'Connell, into a Church of Ireland family. William's parents were fluent Irish-speakers who taught him the language at the age of six. He attended TCD from 1891 and was ordained in 1902. He became rector of Achonry in 1907 and afterwards obtained a post as lecturer in Celtic languages and literature at Queen's , Belfast
Ó Conaill married Helen Young in 1905; they had three sons before she died of tuberculosis in 1925 after the couple moved to Dublin. He later married Marcella Graham, a French Catholic, and may have informally converted to Catholicism. He became assistant director of Radio Éireann in 1927, months before he was struck and killed by a bus while hailing a tram on Lansdowne Road, Dublin.
He was a prolific translator, from Irish to engliash, as well as from a wide range of languages - Persian and Greek among them.
