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Life
| 1881-1946 [Robin Ernest William Flower; fam. “Blaithín”]; b. 16 Oct., Meanwood, Yorkshire; ed. Leeds Grammar School and Pembroke College, Oxford; encouraged to visit Blasket Islands by Carl Marstrander at the School of Irish Learning (Dublin), and encouraged K. H. Jackson to go in turn; learned Irish there from Tomas O Criomhtain; issued Eire and Other Poems (1910) - some prev. in Country Life and Academy; Dep. Keeper of MSS at BML, 1929-1944; m. Ida Mary Streeter; |
| trans. Tomás Ó Criomthain [O’Crohan], The Islandman (1934); he continued the catalogue of Irish MSS in the British Museum initiated by Standish Hayes O’Grady (1926-53) - ultimately concluded by Myles Dillon - and introduced O’Grady’s trans. of The Triumphs of Turlough by Sean Mac Ruaidhrí Mac Craith for the Irish Texts Society (1929); |
| he issued a memoir of the Blaskets as The Western Island or Great Blasket (1944), illustrated by his wife Ida; his The Irish Tradition (1947) containing ‘a selection he had put together of what he had already said or written on the subject on various occasions over a long period of years’ [q. source] was published posthumously; his translation of “Pangur Bán” - the scribing monk’s marginal verses on his cat - is an anthology piece; d. 16 Jan. 1946; his ashes were scattered on the Blasket Islands. DIH DIL OCIL FDA |
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Works| Poetry |
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| Scholarly editions |
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| Prose |
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| Miscellaneous |
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Bibliographical details
Monkey Music (London: D. MacBeth, 1925), 27pp., ill. [1 lf. of pls.] - CONTENTS: “The monkey day”; “The rebel”; “The monkey sailors”; “Ancient wisdom”; “Man”; “Paripace and Paripale”; “Lullaby”; “The wood beyond the wood”; “The moon monkey”; “The parrot”; “The forest ball”; “The blooming of the flower”. (See Notes, infra.)
Caithréim Thoirdhealbhaigh [Triumphs of Turlough] by Sean Mac Ruaidhrí Mac Craith [Irish Text Society, Vol. 26, 27, 2 vols. (London: Simpkin, Marshall for the Irish Texts Society 1929), Vol. I: xvi, 237, 26pp.; Vol. II: 252, 32pp.) - Middle Irish text with English translation, introd. and notes taken from the MS of 1509 in the Royal Irish Academy as 23 Q16, and another at TCD as H. 1. 18, No.1292 - written by Aindrias Mac Cruitin in 1721; bibliographical references and indexes. CONTENTS: Vol. I: Caithréim Thoirdhealbhaigh, ed. by Standish Hayes O’Grady [with] an introduction and index by Robin Flower; Vol. II. Caithréim Thoirdhealbhaigh / The triumphs of Turlough by John Mac Rory Magrath, translated by Standish Hayes O’Grady.
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Criticism
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[ There is a Robin Flower page at Wikipedia - online; accessed 03.09.2011; see also British Library Blog on Irish MSS - online; accessed 16.02.2024.]
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Commentary
Sean O’Sullivan, The Folklore of Ireland (NY: Hastings House
Publs. 1974), p.11-12: ‘Flower remarks somewhere that “by the
accretion of centuries” there came into existence a “kind of
Dictionary of National Topography which fitted the famous sites of the
country each with its appropriate legend.’ (Cited in J. W. Foster, Fictions
of the Irish Literary Revival,
Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1987, p.15.)
Brian Fallon, reviewing rep. edn. of Poems and Translations in The Irish Times (11 June 1994), remarks: ‘He was an ardent Hibernophile who did much good in his day, but as a poet he was no better or worse than several hundred minor Georgians between the two world wars. In general, the translations from the old Irish read far better than the “original” verse and at least one of them, ‘Pangur Bán’, has become an anthology piece.’
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Quotations
The Irish Tradition (1947): ‘There is one characteristic of Celtic speech ... which gets little notice in modern criticism, although it was the first thing to strike the Romans when they came in contact with the Celts. The elder Cato tells us that the Celts were distinguished for their aptitude for fighting and for subtle speech. The Irish have maintained these two characters. Indeed, I think if one asked what characteristic was to be found everywhere in Irish literature from the first records down to the tales and popular sayings current among the peasantry to-day, the answer must necessarily be: a sharp and homely brevity of epigrammatic speech eminently calculated for the rapid thrust and return of contentious talk.’ (p.110; quoted in John Wilson Foster, ‘The Islandman: The Teller and the Tale’, in Between Shadows: Modern Irish Writing and Culture, Dublin: IAP 2009, p.22; see also under Thomas O’Crohan [Ó Criomthain], infra.)
On Translation: ‘Some apology is perhaps necessary for the substitution of simpler English lyrical measures for the intricate and subtly interwoven harmonies of alliteration and internal rhyme in the Irish. But the attempt to borrow those qualities of verse could only end in a mechanical exercise, which might be a metrical commentary, but could not be poetry. And to translate poetry by less than poetry is a sin beyond absolution.’ (Poems and Translations, Dublin 1931; rep. 1994 [q.p.]; quoted in Alan Titley, ‘The Reshaping of Tradition’, Nailing Theses: Selected Essays, Belfast: Lagan Press 2011, p.107.)
The Islandman (trans. Robin Flower; 1st edn. 1927; OUP 1985), Prefatory remarks on style: ‘For the method adopted in this translation a word of excuse may be offered. Irish and English are so widely separate in their mode of expression that nothing like a literal rendering from the one language to the other is possible. It is true that there has come into being a literary dialect, sometimes used for translation from Irish or for the purpose of giving the effect of Irish speech, which in books or on the stage has met with considerable applause. And in skilful hands this mixture of Irish and English idioms has often an effect of great charm. It does not to my ear, however, convey the character of the language as naturally spoken by those to whom it is their only speech. There is always something slightly artificial about it, and often a suggestion of the pseudo-poetic. This literary dialect could not be used to render the forthright, colloquial simplicity of the original of this book. For the same reason the more sophisticated forms of literary English are also excluded. It seems best therefore to adopt a plain, straightforward style, aiming at the language of ordinary men who narrate the common experiences of their life frankly and without any cultivated mannerism. The constant charm of Irish idiom, which is so delightful in the original, must necessarily be lost. But rouge is no substitute for a natural complexion.’ (p.x.)
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References
Frank O’Connor, Book of Ireland (Collins 1979 Edn.)
selects “Passage at Night – The Blaskets”, from The
Western Island. The poem is an aisling, or reports an aisling overheard.
(Note: there are no allusions to Flower in O’Connor’s A Backward
Look, A Survey of Irish Literature, 1967.)
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Notes
Buggering Bede: Flower is accredited with discovering the interpolations by Laurence Newell in Bede’s works (Eccles. History, &c.. (See Proc. of the British Academy, 21, 1935, p.62.)
Monkey business?: see The Maguires and the Monkey: Comic Song and Chorus (NY: M. Witmark & Sons [1894]), 5p., fol.
Pegging along: Robin Flower and Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson gleaned some further stories from Peig Sayers and printed them in Béaloídeas. (See Flower, The Western Island or The Great Blasket, 1945.)
Sean O’Faoláin: O’Faoláin received a supportive reference from Robin Flower in seeking the chair of English at UCC, 1931 - a chair which was awarded to Daniel Corkery (though the latter was not in fact a competent Irish-speaker).
Annals of Boyle: Flower’s remarks on the Annals of Boyle are quoted in the Wikipedia article on that manuscript which was used as a copy-text for Richard D’Alton’s History of Ireland [...] to 1245, 2 vols. (1845). See D'Alton - as supra.
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