Ó Gaoithín, Micheál (1904–74), poet and writer in Irish, was born 3 January 1904 on the Great Blasket island, one of the six surviving children of Pádraig ‘Flint’ Ó Guithín, a small farmer and fisherman, and his wife Peig Sayers (qv). He received his earliest education in the local national school and hoped to attend secondary school but his parents could not afford to send him. Instead, he became a fisherman and worked on the family farm until around 1930 when he decided to follow his other siblings to Boston in search of work. Failing to find a job and being in poor health, he soon returned to Ireland. His interest in literature and folklore began at an early age and like his mother, Peig, he was a renowned storyteller. A lamentation on the death of a young girl entitled ‘Brighid Stac’, composed when he was just 15, was published in An Lóchrann (April 1919).
According to Stewart, Brian Ó Ceallaigh (qv) was most likely responsible for bringing a copy of Boccaccio's Decameron to the island (Stewart, xi). At the age of eighteen or nineteen, Ó Gaoithín translated six stories from the Decameron into Irish, transposing them into an Irish setting, Hibernicising the text and later even attributing one of the stories to himself. He often recounted these stories and the scholar Heinrich Wagner (qv) wrote one of them down from Peig in 1946. He may have completed the translations in the hope of financial gain. This was not Ó Gaoithín's only attempt at translation. Amongst his manuscripts in the University College Dublin (UCD) folklore archives, in a collection entitled ‘Micheál Ó Gaoithín's Nachlass’, is a translation into Irish of a portion of H. Rider Haggard's, Pearl-maiden, a tale of the fall of Jerusalem (1903). He was a prolific writer and Bo Almqvist, who was first introduced to Ó Gaoithín by Séamus Ó Duilearga (qv) on 26 July 1969, noted that no attempt had been made to assess the total number of pages written by Ó Gaoithín, including poems, novels, biographies as well as folklore and ethnological material, and suggested that few have written as much in the Irish language as he did. Ó Gaoithín destroyed many of his manuscripts on leaving his home to go to St Elizabeth's Hospital in Dingle towards the end of his life, while some are in private ownership and others are lost.
Shortly after his return from Boston, he met Máire Ní Chinnéide, a visitor to the Blaskets, who encouraged Peig to record her life story. As she was unable to read or write Ó Gaoithín wrote it down, although he felt he never received due recognition for the work. Pádraig Ó Fiannachta notes that Ó Gaoithín intervened in the text of Peig (Oidhreacht an Bhlascaoid, 278), while Muiris Mac Conghail states that it is difficult to say with certainty who wrote what (The Blaskets, 159). Ó Gaoithín also wrote Peig's second book Machnamh Seanmhná (1939). A third work, Beatha Pheig Sayers, was written while he was still living on the island but not published until 1970. Ó Gaoithín was the last of the official Blasket poets and was known to the other islanders as ‘Maidhc File’ or simply ‘An File’. He was widely read and greatly influenced by the reading material that visiting scholars and language enthusiasts brought to the island. He made the acquaintance of a number of such visitors including Robin Flower (qv) and Brian Ó Ceallaigh.
Ó Gaoithín kept a diary of life on the island for Ó Ceallaigh between 1923 and May 1924, now in the National Library of Ireland (NLI). When Ó Gaoithín eventually left the island for the mainland in 1942 to live in a cottage in Baile Bhiocáire, Dún Chaoin, the village where Peig had grown up, it marked the beginning of the exodus from the island and the resettlement of the inhabitants in Dún Chaoin.
In 1942 Ó Gaoithín wrote his own memoirs, Is trua ná fanann an óige. It remained unpublished, however, until 1953 and appears to have been written while he was still living on the island. Pádraig Ó Fiannachta argues that rather than being an autobiography, the work is a reflection on the transience of life and appears to be influenced by medieval sermons (Ó Muircheartaigh, 271). It was later translated into English by Tim Enright under the title A pity youth does not last (1982). Ó Gaoithín published a collection of poems in 1968 under the title Coinnle corra. According to Mac Conghail the volume possibly contains the poet's most important work and on its publication surprised those who knew Ó Gaoithín. The poems deal primarily with themes of loneliness, loss and sadness. A poem entitled ‘Caoineadh do Liam Berkley’ was chosen by Séamas Ó Céileachair for inclusion in Nuafhilí 2 (1953–1963) (1968).
As a storyteller Ó Gaoithín possessed a vast repertoire as well as a rich store of folklore and had a tendency to extend the telling of his story to even greater lengths than Peig did. According to Bo Almqvist, both Ó Gaoithín and his mother ‘imprinted their own experiences, opinions and attitudes on the narrative material they received’ (Almqvist, 127). The UCD Irish folklore archives hold over 8,400 pages written by Ó Gaoithín, most of them from his own memory but some also from his mother, Peig, and another woman on the island, Máire Ní Shé (Béaloideas (1975), 91). He possessed a vast vocabulary and this may be due to some extent to the experience he gained as a translator. Almqvist collected 1,500 proverbs from him and Ó Gaoithín himself was employed as a part-time collector for the Irish folklore commission from 1956 to 1963. Almqvist draws attention to the fact that Ó Gaoithín sometimes tried to pass off material he had read in books as genuine folklore material and notes that he sometimes indulged in ‘mystifications’ and ‘falsifications’. Sometimes he attributed his own or Peig's stories to other storytellers in the area. He also had a tendency to embellish and impose his own style on material he had heard from storytellers in the area.
Although it appears that Ó Gaoithín considered marrying at some stage in the 1920s, he remained a bachelor as the girl in question did not want to marry into island life. Approximately six years before he died he took an interest in painting and drawing with the encouragement of the artist Maria Simonds-Gooding. A number of his paintings appeared in an exhibition entitled ‘An ghaeltacht bheo’ which opened on 8 May 1974. For a period prior to his death he lived in St Elizabeth's Hospital, Dingle, and he died there 27 April 1974. He was buried beside his mother, Peig, in the new cemetery in Dún Chaoin.
More information on this entry is available at the National Database of Irish-language biographies (Ainm.ie).