Frances Browne (1816-79)

[ top ]

[ top ]

Bibliographical details
Granny’s Wonderful Chair, and its Tales of Fairy Times (London: Griffith & Farran 1857), ill. Kenny Meadows; Do. [another edn.] [1891], ill. Marie Seymour Lucas, reiss. [1896]; Do. [another edn.] [1900]; Do. [another edn.] with intro. by Frances Hodgson Burnett [i.e., plagiarised by] as The Story of the Lost Fairy Book (London & NY: McLuse, Phillips & Co. 1904); Do. [another edn.], intro. by Dollie Radford (London: J. M. Dent; NY: E. P. Dutton [1906]), ill. Dora Curtis; Do. [another edn.] (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1908), col. ill. W. H. Margetson; Do. [another edn.] (London: S. W. Partridge & Co. 1909); Do. as ‘Lords of the Castles’, and Other Stories from Granny’s Wonderful Chair ... with composition exercises] (London: A. C. Black 1909); Do. [another edn.] (London: Blackie & Son [1912]), ill. A. A. Dixon; Do. [another edn.] (London: G. T. Foulis & Co 1925), ill. ‘Decies’; Do. [another edn. (London: E. P. Dutton 1913); Do. [another edn.] (London 1925), ill. Charles Folkard; Do. [another edn]. (London [1926]), ill. R. B. Ogle; Do. [another edn.] (Toronto & London: Letchworth [1927]); Do. [another edn., first 3 chaps.] (London: [Brodie Bks. 1927]); Do. [another edn.], ed. H. A. Treble (Edinburgh & London: Oliver & Boyd [1938]); Do. [another edn] as ‘The Story of Fairyfoot’, from Granny’s Wonderful Chair ([London:] Gulliver Little Books [1943]); Do. [another edn.] (London: Gulliver Popular Library 1943); Do. [another edn. ‘retold from the story of Frances Browne’ [Silver Torch Series] (Glasgow: Collins 1947); Do. [another edn.] ([London]: Roger Ingram 1948), ill. Sylvia Green; Do. [reissue of 1912 edn.] (London: Blackie & Son [1955]) ... &c.

“Songs of Our Land”
Songs of our land, ye are with us forever, The power and the splendor of thrones pass away; But yours is the might of some far flowing river. Through Summer’s bright roses or Autumn’s decay. Ye treasure each voice of the swift passing ages, And truth which time writeth on leaves or on sand; Ye bring us the thoughts of poets and sages, And keep them among us, old songs of our land. The bards may go down to the place of their slumbers, The lyre of the charmer be hushed in the grave, But far in the future the power of their numbers Shall kindle the hearts of our faithful and brave, It will waken an echo in souls deep and lonely, Like voices of reeds by the summer breeze fanned; It will call up a spirit for freedom, when only Her breathings are heard in the songs of our land. For they keep a record of those, the true-hearted, Who fell with the cause they had vowed to maintain; They show us bright shadows of glory departed, Of love that grew cold and hope that was vain.	The page may be lost and the pen long forsaken, And weeds may grow wild o’er the brave heart and hand; But ye are still left when all else hath been taken, Like streams in the desert, sweet songs of our land. Songs of our land, ye have followed the stranger, With power over ocean and desert afar, Ye have gone with our wanderers through distance and danger, And gladdened their path like a homeguiding star. With the breath of our mountains in summers long vanished, And visions that passed like a wave from the sand, With hope for their country and joy from her banished. Ye come to us ever, sweet songs of our land. The spring time may come with the song of our glory, To bid the green heart of the forest rejoice, But the pine of the mountain though blasted and hoary, And the rock in the desert, can send forth a voice, It was thus in their triumph for deep desolations, While ocean waves roll or the mountains shall stand, Still hearts that are bravest and best of the nations, Shall glory and live in the songs of our land.
Bibl. note: First published in Tyrone Constitution, in 1871; set to music by Alicia Needham; rep. in C. Desmond Greaves, Easter Rising in Song & Ballad (1980). Note that a poem by her called “What is Truth?” had earlier appeared in the Constitution for Friday 2 March 1849 while a notice on her appeared in the paper on Friday 18 Sept. 1891.
Note: The verses of the poem - sometimes given as octets - were printed on Facebook by Eoin Ó Murchú from family memory and identified by several contributors in days following 26 Jan. 2020.
The poem was also printed in Rev. Patrick Walsh, ed., Songs of the Gael: A Collection of Anglo-Irish Songs and Ballads [with] Traditional Irish Airs (Dublin: Browne & Nolan 1922), pp.4-5 [available at Internet Archive - online].

[ top ]

Criticism
J. R. R. Adams, ‘Frances Brown [sic]: The Blind Poetess of Stranorlar’, in Raphoe Diocesan Magazine (May 1974), pp.5-6; Brenda O’Hanrhan, Donegal Authors: A Bibliography (1982).

[ top ]

Commentary
Margaret Kelleher, ‘Prose Writing and Drama in English; 1830-1890 [...]’, in Cambridge History of Irish Literature, ed. Kelleher & Philip O’Leary (Cambridge UP 2006), Vol. 1 [Chap. 11]: ‘In 1886 Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of children’s stories such as The Secret Garden, began in the New York periodical St Nicholas a series entitled “Stories from the Lost Fairy Book, Retold by the Child Who Read Them”. The “lost” book was immediately revealed to be Irish author Frances Browne’s well-known Granny’s Wonderful Chair and Its Tales of Fairy Times (1856), editions of which, despite Burnett’s claims to have searched unsuccessfully in both England and America, had appeared throughout the 1880s.’ (p.474.)

[ top ]

References
Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904, selects “The Story of Childe Charity”, and “What hath Time Taken?”.

D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912), lists The Star of Atteghei and other poems, London 1844; Lyrics and Misc. Poems, Edinburgh 1848; give biog. and rems: blind from birth; novels include the reprinted child’s Granny’s Wonderful Chair [n.d.]. Further, Rev. Charles Roger notes in Lyra Britannica that she was born in 1818 [DIW seems to have copied this date]. Also anthologised in Hayes, MacIlwaine (Lyra Celtica), Sparling, Williams, et al.

Irish Book Lover indexes the poet as ‘Brown, Frances’. Vol. VIII (1916-17) contains a ‘Centenary’ Notice but gives no indication that she was cured by Sir William Wilde. See also Vol. II.

Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980) lists the poet as ‘Frances Brown’ with dates, 1816-1879.

Elaine Showalter, A Literature of their Own (1984), calls Browne a children’s book writer and gives biog.: b. Donegal, seventh of twelve children of a post-master; blind from childhood; self-educated, left home at 21, to Edinburgh, then London; belonged to Religious Tract Society; remained single; first novel, The Ericksons (1852).

[ top ]

Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979), containings article by Mary Rose Callaghan recounting details of the plagiarism of Granny’s Wonderful Chair, a set of instructive children’s stories, by Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1877, and the subsequent reprinting of the original.

John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), gives biog.: helped by her sister she turned out articles for magazines incl., after 1841, The Athenaeum. contrib. to Leisure Hour during 20 years; issued The Eriksons (1852); worked for Religious Texts Society [TRS]; issued 18 books incl. Granny’s Wonderful Chair (1857) and autobiography (1861); Civil list pension 1863; died of apoplexy.

Margaret Kelleher, ‘Prose Writing and Drama in English; 1830-1890 [...]’, in Cambridge History of Irish Literature, ed. Kelleher & Philip O’Leary (Cambridge UP 2006), Vol. 1 [Chap. 11], writes of Frances Browne, ‘“the blind poetess of Donegal” and author of highly successful children’s stories, as well as novels such as My Share of the World (1861) and The Hidden Sin (1866).’

[ top ]

Notes
Emma Donoghue, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits (London: Virago 2002), contains a story “Night Vision” dealing with the childhood of Frances Brown or Browne; lived in London with yngr. sister and amanuensis.

[ top ]