The Wearing of the Black by Padraic Fiacc

The family returned to Ireland soon after the birth. His South Armagh parents were on a business trip to the United States when Donn Byrne was born in New York. Donn Byrne at Coolmain Castle Donn Byrne was born Brian Oswald Patrick Donn-Byrne on 20 November 1889. Format Hardback Publisher Sampson Low, Marston & Co, Ltd Condition Used, Very Good SKU KEX0279159 Hardback Condition: Used, Very Good when he learned that he would have to wear evening clothes to his early morning examinations, which no true Irish gentleman would ever do. After graduation he moved to Paris and Leipzig to continue his studies at the Sorbonne and Leipzig University, with the hope of joining the British Foreign Office as a diplomat. At this time he also met Dorothea (Dolly) Cadogan. While at the school he published in The National Student, the student magazine. In 1907 he went to the University of Dublin to study Romance languages. He was equally fluent in Irish and English, growing up in an area were Gaelic was still spoken. He entered local Irish festivals (Feiseanna) using the name Brian O'Beirne, and he frequently won. Through Hobson, he acquired a taste for Irish history and nationalism that the culture was deeply immersed in at the time.

Lynd wrote of that meeting, mentioning the singing of a little fair haired boy (Donn-Byrne). Hobson took him to an early meeting of the volunteers (1906), when he was accompanied by Robert Lynd of the London Daily News. Byrne says of his family: 'We were about the only one of the four big Irish families of the gap in the North to still keep our mouths, if not our heads, above water.' At fourteen, he met Bulmer Hobson, founder of Irish volunteer movement.

The Wearing of the Black by Padraic Fiacc