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Billy the Kid, the infamous Irish American outlaw of the mid-19th century, may have spoken Irish, expert Chuck Usmar claimed in 2015. Usmar says Billy the Kid helped translate for Irish rancher Pat Coghlan's niece Mary, who spoke Irish.
Scholars uncover answers and create more questions on the outlaw’s life and family from New York to New Mexico.This past year has been a watershed in terms of new scholarship on Billy the Kid. Here, in a True West exclusive, are the new finds you need to know about.
When I was first diving deep into all the Billy the Kid scholarship back in the last century—doesn’t that sound ridiculous?—much heavy lifting had already been done by my go-to researchers, Philip J. Rasch, Nora True Henn, William A. Kelleher and Frederick Nolan. Even then folks thought there was little more to find out.