George A. Little

Life
1899-1945 [George Aloysius Little]; b. Dublin; served as med. officer in old IRA (Dublin Brigade); issued Ouzel Galley (1940); Malachi Horan Remembers (1943), folklore; Brendan the Navigator (1945); Dublin before the Vikings (1957); contributed frequently to Dublin Historical Record. DIW

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Works

Monographs
  • Brendan the Navigator: An Interpretation (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son1945), xx, 254pp., il. [maps].
  • Dublin before the Vikings (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1957), xvi, 184pp.
Articles (sel.)
  • ‘Malachi Horan Remembers’, in Dublin Historical Record, IV (June-Aug. 1942), [Pt. II] pp.121-40 [narrates affairs concerning Mr Fitzgerald of the Hungrygrass, of Baltyglass, and Dan O’Connell, The Murdering Hollow, &c.]
  • ‘Pre-Norse Dublin’, in Dublin Historical Record, VIII (1945-6) [cited in John Harvey, Dublin (Batsford 1949)].
  • ‘The Provenance of the Church of St Michael de le Pole’, in Dublin Historical Record, 12, 1 (Feb. 1951), pp2-13 [with adverse remarks on the antiquarianism of Margaret Stokes].
Offprints
  • ‘The Ouzel Galley’, Dublin Historical Record, 3, 2 (Dublin 1940), 40pp., ill. [front., pls.].
  • ‘Rev. John Austin, S.J’ (Dublin: Irish Messenger Office 1960), 16pp.
  • ‘Rev. Peter James Kenney S.J’ (Dublin: Irish Messenger Office 1961), 12pp.

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Quotations
Dublin before the Vikings (1957), setting out to establish that there was a Gaelic city before the arrival of the Norsemen, quotes various writers on either side, viz.: 1] ‘Owing its origin to Danish auspices, Dublin was neither first built, nor originally peopled by men of Irish race.’ (Litton-Falkiner, Handbook to the City of Dublin and Its Surrounding Districts, prepared for the British Association, Dublin 1908). 2] ‘I cannot at all believe that the settlement of Dublin as a place of commerce and as a fortified town can be attributed to the Scandinavian pirates, in the ninth century.’ (John O’Donovan, ‘Annals of Dublin’, in Dublin Penny Journal, I, 1 (q.d.), p.174; 3] Little: ‘I hold in fact that the dogmatic conviction expressed by Litton-Falkiner and subscribed to by so many is against all the evidence and must therefore be held untrue.’ (p.xiv).

 

References
Belfast Central Public Library holds Brendan; Malachi Horan Remembers (1943). Dublin Before the Vikings in library of Albert le Brocquy. Cathach Bks. 12 lists Brendan the Navigator, An interpretation (Dublin 1945).

 

Notes
Namesake: Not to be confused with Andrew George Little (1863-1945), joint-editor of the Collectanea Franciscana, or George A. Little, musician and author of “Where are you love?” (1939), “ Virginia, Georgia and Caroline” (1942), “I’ll never make you cry again” (1946) and “ You're in Kentucky sure as You're Born” - often with Larry Shay.

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