The unfortunate Myles Joyce, whose impending pardon for the Maamtrasna Murders will come 136 years too late to save him from the gallows, was not merely the victim of a notorious miscarriage of British justice. This was not lost on his namesake James Joyce, a writer who knew a good metaphor when he saw one. But as he told readers, the 1882 trial had been a collision of two other languages: Irish – the only thing Myles Joyce spoke – and English, through which he was convicted. The gulf in communication was “at times comic and at times tragic”, Joyce wrote. The ghost of poor Myles Joyce may have haunted a Myles of more recent vintage: Na gCopaleen, formerly of this parish.

Source: The Irish Times March 30, 2018 00:11 UTC