Ernie O'Malley - Writings

Writings

O'Malley's most celebrated writings are On Another Man's Wound, a memoir of the War of Independence, and The Singing Flame an account of his involvement in the Civil War. The two volumes were written during O'Malley's time in New York, New Mexico and Mexico City between 1929 and 1932.

On Another Man's Wound was published in London in 1936, although the seven pages detailing O'Malley's ill-treatment while under arrest in Dublin Castle were omitted. An unabridged version was published in America a year later under the title Army Without Banners: Adventures of an Irish Volunteer. Critical responses were enthusiastic:The New York Times described it as "a stirring and beautiful account of a deeply felt experience" while The New York Herald Tribune called it "a tale of heroic adventure told without rancor or rhetoric." It has rarely been out of print since. The book presents an unvarnished and complex picture of revolutionary struggle. In 1928 O'Malley defined his attitude in a letter to fellow-Republican Sheila Humphreys:

I have the bad and disagreeable habit of writing the truth as I see it, and not as other people (including yourself) realize it, in which we are a race of spiritualized idealists with a world idea of freedom, having nothing to learn for we have made no mistakes.

In an article in The Irish Times in 1996, the writer John McGahern described On Another Man's Wound as "the one classic work to have emerged directly from the violence that led to independence", adding that it "deserves a permanent and honoured place in our literature."

Perhaps reflecting its more controversial theme in Ireland, The Singing Flame was not published until 1978, well after O'Malley's death. O'Malley also wrote another book on the revolutionary period, Raids and Rallies, describing his and other fighters' experiences. This book was based on a lengthy series of interviews he had conducted in the 1950s with former IRA men and ran as a highly popular serial in The Sunday Press from 1955 to 1956. In addition, O'Malley wrote large volumes of poetry and contributed to a literary and cultural magazine "The Bell", set up by his fellow republican Peadar O'Donnell.

O'Malley's extensive notes, compiled while he was an active IRA officer, are one of the best primary historical sources for the revolutionary period in Ireland, 1919–23, from the republican perspective. In the 1930s and 1940s he also toured Ireland interviewing veterans of the republican struggle. He intended this to be a counter-weight to the official state oral project, the Bureau of Military History, which was not supposed to cover the years of civil war in 1922-23. His papers are now housed in the University College Dublin archives, to whom they were donated by O'Malley's son Cormac in 1974. Cormac O'Malley retains the bulk of the remainder of his father's personal papers, poetry, and some manuscripts in his New York residence.

His papers on the Civil War were published in 2008, under the title, No Surrenders Here!

Ernie O'Malley's autobiographical works are the main inspiration behind the Ken Loach film The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and the character of Damien is based partly on O'Malley.