Micí Mac Gabhann

Micí Mac Gabhann (November 22, 1865 Cloughaneely, County Donegal, Ireland - November 29, 1948) was a seanchaí and memoirist from the County Donegal Gaeltacht. He is best known for his posthumously published emigration memoir Rotha Mór an tSaoil (1959). It was dictated to his folklorist son-in law Seán Ó hEochaidh and polished for publication by Proinsias Ó Conluainn. The account won wide praise and was translated into English by Valentin Iremonger as The Hard Road to Klondike (1962).

Micí Mac Gabhann was born "in a little thatched cottage" near the Atlantic Ocean in Derryconnor Townland on 22 November 1865. His parents' names were Thomas Mac Gabhann and Bridget Cannon.

As a boy, he witnessed the pervasive making of poitin by local families, the resulting violence between local residents and law enforcement, and the imprisonment of his own father for poitin-making.

Despite the fact that he had spent some time some time attending the district school at Magheraroarty, Mac Gabhann lamented that he never knew enough English to understand the teacher. He later attributed his education to local resident Sean Johnny, who had attended a hedge school as a youth and who taught Mac Gabhann and other local boys according to the same method.

In May 1874, the Mac Gabhann family had become so destitute that Bridget brought her 8-year-old son to a hiring fair in Letterkenny. There, wealthy farmers and landowners "were looking for boys that would herd and give a bit of service around and for bigger boys that would help with the agricultural work." After bargaining through an interpreter, a landowner from Glenveagh bought Micí until the following November in return for the sum of £1 paid to his mother. As he said a brief and painful farewell to her, Micí noticed that his mother, "was tightening up her face as though a dagger was going through her heart."

...
Wikipedia