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Tomás MacCurtain, (1884-1920), led 1000 Irish Volunteers in Cork at the outset of the 1916 Easter Rising but, due to conflicting orders from Dublin, the Cork Volunteers didn't participate in any fighting. MacCurtain was subsequently imprisoned with other 1916 Irish Volunteers at Frongach Prisoner of War Camp in Wales. Tadhg Barry, (1880-1921) was a journalist, trade unionist, and a founding member of the Irish Volunteers in Cork. Arthur Griffith, (1872-1922), Irish politician, writer, founder of Sinn Féin, and signatory of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921.This letter may have been written from Frongoch P.O.W. Camp in Wales, where the writer was detained after the 1916 Easter Rising. The writer has been getting news of home and of Barry's activities (Gaelic League). Apparently Barry had expressed words of encouragement for a mutual acquaintance, Arthur (probably Arthur Griffith) which MacCurtain endorses. The writer has been trying to encourage Arthur (possibly to write) and is afraid that others, one in particular, will take on the job, even though they are not capable of doing it. He advocates non-cooperation with these people.
The data in these XML files was generated based on a data dump from the Magellan database (https://github.com/Maynooth-Center-for-Digital-Humanities/Magellan). Each database record has been converted to a JSON file (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/json). The element section of the JSON file contains the TEI-encoded contents of the letters. The TEI XML has been cleaned and made well-formed using a Python script (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/src).