Life
1862-1953 [Margaret (Mary); var. Mary Anne; née Drummond]; b. Manchester; ed. University College, London in Celtic literature; mbr. of Belfast Gaelic League Exec.; lectured at Ard-Scoil Uladh, Belfast; later appt. to the QUB Senate; converted to Catholicism, 1902; met Patrick Pearse and conducted a friendly correspondence with him; supported his school, St. Enda’s; issued The Tain (1907), a verse-translation, commenced in c.1897, which became a great success at St. Enda’s, where she made the first of many visits in April 1909; appt. Margaret Stokes memorial Lecturer, 1909; moved to Dublin on the death of her husband in 1912. DUB
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Works
The Tain: An Irish Epic told in English Verse (Dublin: Maunsel & Co. 1907; rep. 1908); Do. [another edn.] (Dublin: Talbot
[1924]), ill. incl. appendixes of place-names, names of people, tribes and animals, and Gaelic terms.
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References
A. A. Kelly ed., Pillars of the House (Dublin: Wolfhound Press 1988), gives selection.
Ulster Libraries: Belfast Linen Hall Library holds The Tain, Irish epic in English verse (1907). Library of Herbert Bell, Belfast, holds The Tain, Irish epic in English verse (1907), 4o.
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Notes
St. Enda’s (Patrick Pearse’s school): Mary Hutton’ s ‘juvenile verse translation of the Táin; she ‘visited St Enda’s for the first time in April 1909 and her edition of the Tain was enormously popular at the school’. (See Elaine Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots: St. Enda’s and the Cult of Boyhood, Dublin: Four Court’s Press 2004, p.93.)
Ernie O’Malley [q.v.] passed the time reading her verse-translation of The Táin while the Public Records wing burned during the Republican occupation of the Four Courts in 1922, having been ignited by his company, as recorded in his autobiography, The Singing Flame [rep. edn.] (Anvil 1978).
Kith & Kin? See Anne Hutton, trans., The Embassy in Ireland of Monsignor G.B. Rinuccini, Archbishop of Fermo, in the years 1645-1649: published from the Original MSS. in the Rinuccini Library by G. Aiazaz (1873) [under Rinucinni - infra.]
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