MacAMHLAIGH, Donall. An Irish Navvy. The diary of an exile. Translated from the Irish by Valentin Iremonger.

THE LONG DISTANT KIDDIES

London: Routledge, 1964. Octavo. First edition. pp. x, 182. Green cloth, titled in gilt. A fine copy in fine unclipped dust jacket.
First edition in English of one of the classic accounts of post-war Irish labour migration to Britain. Based on the Irish-language original (Dialann Deoraí, 1960), MacAmhlaigh’s diary follows a seasonal, always-on-the-move routine of a navvy’s life, finding “the start”, sharing draughty huts and lodgings, enduring long wet shifts on roads and building sites, and sending money home, the long-distance kiddies, set against the small solidarities of camp kitchens, chapels, union halls and Saturday night dances. The tone is spare, wry and unsentimental: humour and camaraderie sit beside homesickness, drink, and the frequent abrasions of casual labour, prejudice and loneliness.
Valentin Iremonger’s translation keeps MacAmhlaigh’s idiom and dry wit while opening the book to a wider readership; it quickly became a touchstone text for social historians and for later writers of the Irish diaspora.

[CAT 162]