Photos

Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin (with the kind permission of the National Folklore Collection, UCD)

Biographical Note

Ó Súilleabháin (Sullivan), Pádraig (Pádhraic, Patrick, Patt) (1864-?): Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin was born in Allintober, county Galway, on December 17, 1864, one of two sons and three daughters Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, farmer, and Neilí Nic Giobúin. He received no formal primary education, but went to night school for three months when he was 22. He was a farmer. As a child, he used to go with his mother to the markets selling homespun cloth. After he married, he spent two years working ‘on the railway’ between Galway and Clifden, during which time he used to go home to reap the harvest, cut turf and pick potatoes. He spent another seven years going to England seasonally. He then went to Scranton, USA, and worked as a miner for two years. He returned to Ireland for a year and then went to Pittsburg, where he worked in construction. He was living in Corr na Móna, Cong, county Galway, in 1930. The Sullivan household was recorded as living in Dooghta, Cong, county Galway, during the censuses of 1901 [http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai000837377/] and 1911 [http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai002429329/]. Pádraig married Máire Ní Dhroighneáin around 1891, when he was 26 and she 22. They had five daughters and five sons. Four daughters and four sons went to America. His wife died in the summer of 1940. Pádraig died some time after July 1947. A good deal of folkloric material collected from Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin is housed in the National Folklore Collection, UCD. Included in that material is an account Pádraig gave of his life to Proinnsias de Búrca.

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