Quick Facts
Biography
Seán Ó hEinirí (Seán Ó hInnéirghe, 1915 – 26 July 1998), known in English as John Henry, was an Irish seanchaí and a native of Cill Ghallagáin, County Mayo. He is believed to have been the last known monolingual Irish speaker.
Background
It was estimated by Whitley Stokes that in 1800 there were around 800,000 monoglot Irish speakers. This dropped to about 320,000 by the end of the famine, and that figure was at under 17,000 in 1911. Monolingual speakers remained in the 1950s, but by the 80s and 90s they had all but disappeared. The last known Northern Irish monoglot, Annie Quinn of Carricknagavina, died in 1997, and it is now believed that Séan Ó hEinirí, who died a year later, was the last monolingual speaker of Irish.
Life
Ó hÉinirí was born in 1915 in Cill Ghallagáin (Kilgalligan), County Mayo. He was from an early age determined to collect as many ancient legends and traditional stories as he could. He was a currach-using fisherman, and a skilled rower.
He became known as a talented seanchaí, and Proinnsias de Búrca collected from him in the days of the Irish Folklore Commission (1935-1971). In later years, he was recorded by Dr. Séamas Ó Catháin of the Department of Irish Folklore from 1975 for more than ten summers. A great deal of this work was published in "Scéalta Chois Cladaigh" ('Stories of Sea and Shore') in 1983 by the Folklore of Ireland Council (Comhairle Bhéaloideas Éireann). O hÉinirí also provided a large number of words and expressions to the lexicographer Tomás de Bhaldraithe, who incorporated these into his influential English-Irish Dictionary, published in 1959. In addition to this, he gave over 800 minor place-names to Patrick Flanagan of the Folklore Commission for the 1974 book The Living Landscape, Kilgalligan, Erris.
Ó hEinieí he was filmed for the 6-part BBC documentary In Search of the Trojan War, which was brodcast in 1985. He also featured on a Morning Ireland report brodcast on 25 July that year.
In 1986 Ó hEinirí was filmed for the Emmy-award winning series The Story of English, which was also produced by the BBC. He remained in the village of Cill Ghallagáin, where he was known as a seanfhondúir ('old-timer, original inhabitant'). He died on 26 July 1998 and was survived by his wife, Máire (d. 2001). He is buried in Kilgalligan Cemetery.