![\"Teastas](\"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/00-micil\/mbm\/joe-\u00e9inni\u00fa-teastas-breithe-agus-b\u00e1iste.jpg\")
<\/a>There\u2019s no question about the year or month of Joe Heaney\u2019s birth but the actual date has been a subject of discussion. The first of October\u2019s often mentioned, particularly as you get closer to his native district of Carna. But the fifteenth is also mentioned and has become something of a received wisdom. At time of writing (1st October 2019), it\u2019s the date given on Wikipedia\u2019s \u2018Joe Heaney\u2019 page<\/a>. Other, more scholarly, works have also mentioned it; sometimes citing Joe\u2019s birth certificate as definitive evidence. (To be fair, their authors would hardly have made this reference without good reason \u2014 but read on\u2026) And indeed, in the past we\u2019ve referred to it ourselves here in the Cartlanna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The need to verify the correct date became pressing during 2019, when we were planning the October release<\/a> for the centennial celebration series<\/a> with members of Joe\u2019s family. Not only were they sure that he was born on the first, they showed us a copy of his birth and baptismal certificate, which confirms it. Joe\u2019s neice, M\u00e1ire \u00c9inni\u00fa, then very kindly made that document available to us and allowed us to reproduce it here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The relevant part states: So while the belief that Joe was born on the fifteenth must have come from somewhere<\/em>, this official document clearly contradicts it and his family aren\u2019t disputing the documentation. Following this, we\u2019re after updating all references to Joe\u2019s birthday in the Cartlanna in deference to the authority of these sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fact is, in Ireland and elsewhere this kind of uncertainty about dates of birth isn\u2019t entirely unusual where the births took place before, roughly, the mid-twentieth century. In the days before computerisation and mature telecommunication and transport infrastructures, many aspects of daily life ran at a slower and more informal pace. And of course, a lot more people were born at home then than now. Official registrations weren\u2019t always a priority for members of the general public and rigorous accuracy wasn\u2019t always a priority for local officialdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s worth pointing out that where uncertainty exists, and even where \u2018family knowledge\u2019 and \u2018The Record\u2019 are in conflict, it\u2019s most unwise to blindly assume that the officially-recorded date must<\/em> be the right one. Errors can originate anywhere. Consider another famous son of the Conamara Gaeltacht. To the certain knowledge of his family<\/a>, the writer and political activist M\u00e1irt\u00edn \u00d3 Cadhain<\/a> was born on 20th January 1906 (in An Cnoc\u00e1n Glas<\/a>, just west of An Spid\u00e9al<\/a>; about forty miles east of Carna and fifteen miles west of Galway City). However, and for whatever reason, various items of official documentation give alternative dates. In that case, as in Joe\u2019s, the evidence favours family knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More generally however, we just have to accept that some historical dates of birth \u2014 and indeed death \u2014 can never be known for sure.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"templates\/template-full-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2912","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2912"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3751,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2912\/revisions\/3751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joeheaney.org\/ga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2026Rugadh Seosam \u00d3 \u00c9ani\u00fa ar an 1a\u1e0b l\u00e1 de mh\u00ed Deire F\u00f3\u0121\u1e41air 1919<\/q>. (The spelling of the handwritten elements predates the standardisation of the 1940s; hence \u2018\u00c9ani\u00fa\u2019.) Directly translated into English, this reads
\u2026Seosam \u00d3 \u00c9ani\u00fa was born on the 1st day of the month of October 1919\u2026<\/q>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n