Patrick MacSwiney

Rev. Patrick J. MacSwiney (frequently spelled McSwiney or MacSweeney, 16 March 1885 – 16 November 1940) was an Irish Catholic priest, Gaelic scholar, antiquarian, historian, teacher, founder of the Kinsale Regional Museum, and benefactor of the people in the parishes in which he worked.

Born and educated in Cork, he studied for the priesthood at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth and was ordained on 18 June 1911. Like all newly ordained Irish priests, he was sent to serve in Britain: he worked for three years in Liverpool. There, in addition to his pastoral duties, he studied at the University College Liverpool under the Celtic scholar Professor Kuno Meyer, and was awarded a master's degree in 1914. He returned to Cork in 1914, became chaplain to Clifton Convalescent Home and convent in Montenotte, and was appointed to the staff of St Finbarr’s Seminary of Farranferris as professor of Irish, Greek and Latin. (In addition to these three languages, he was fluent in French, German and Italian).

He joined the Gaelic League, was a member of the Cork Dramatic Society, which had been founded in 1908 by Daniel Corkery and Patrick MacSwiney’s cousin Terence MacSwiney. The priest was a founding member of the Cork Twenty Club, set up in 1915 by twenty citizens to provide a forum for local writers and artists; he was on the council of the Munster Society of Arts, established after the civil war, as Daniel Corkery wrote: “for the purpose of developing and fostering the fine arts, now practically nonexistent in our midst”.

Among his close friends were his cousins Annie, Mary and Terence MacSwiney, Daniel Corkery, and his Munich wife Germaine, née Kolb, John Horgan, Arnold Bax, Aloys Fleischmann and Tilly Fleischmann. He studied the piano with the latter and gave lecture-recitals with her; he frequently delivered introductory talks before performances of Aloys Fleischmann’s Cathedral choir at broadcasts from the Honan Chapel of University College Cork. He lectured regularly to the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, the Cork Literary and Scientific Society, the Cork School of Art, the Cork Twenty Club, the Munster Society of Arts, and at the University.

...
Wikipedia