Seanascal Domnhall

His Majesty's representative, the governor general of the Irish Free State, sat reading the papers in his suburban cottage outside Dublin. At the U. S. legation Minister William Wallace McDowell buckled on a very clean collar, put a silk hat on his head, took up his papers and went forth to present his credentials from President Roosevelt to George V. The two men never met. Governor General Buckley continued to read the papers while Minister McDowell rode behind a clattering cavalry escort to present himself to scrawny President Eamon de Valera of the Irish Free State.

Such a thing had never happened before in diplomatic history. Had the onetime copperman from Montana deliberately snubbed King George's representative? Not at all. Minister McDowell had simply followed the wishes of the de Valera Government. To be sure that Britain would not be insulted, the Free State High Commissioner in London, John W. Dulanty, had obtained King George's permission to break an ancient precedent.

Only in Ireland could there be a king's representative like Donal Buckley. An ardent Republican and oldtime Sinn Fciner, he was nominated for the governor generalship by his good friend Eamon de Valera in the sneaking hope that Britain would make an issue of the matter by objecting. Britain did not. Once the proprietor of a grocery store, bicycle shop and inn, Donal Buckley was interned in Britain during the War after fighting bravely in the defense of the Postoffice during Dublin's Easter rebellion in 1916. He speaks nothing but Gaelic whenever possible, refuses to live in the Viceregal Lodge in Phoenix Park, will wear no English clothes, sit on no English chair. He prefers to be known by his Gaelic name, Domnhall Ua Buachalla, but will answer to Donal, and insists that his office is not that of a Sassenach governor general, but a good Gaelic Seanascal.

Two years ago Domnhall the Seanascal endeared himself to the Dublin masses by refusing to send King George for Christmas the traditional pastry of "four and twenty woodcocks baked in a pie,'' for generations the annual gift of Irish viceroys. Dublin instantly rang with a new version of the old song:

When the pie was opened The birds began to sing: Three cheers for Donal Buckley NO PASTRY FOR THE KING!

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