Moira O’Neill

Life
1865-1955 [pseud. of (Agnes) Nesta Shakespeare Skrine, née Higginson], b. Cushendun; Co. Antrim; m. Walter Clermont Skrine, and later m. Robert Keane; lived for some years in Canada, then in Rockport, Co., Antrim, and after on farm-estates in Kildare and Wexford; latterly reclusively except for close family contacts; five children; poetry published extensively in Blackwood’s Magazine, both poetry and reviews; collections include An Easter Vacation (1893); Songs of The Glens of Antrim (1901); composed words for tunes collected by Honoria Galway; her dg. was the novelist Molly Keane. DIW DIL DBIV APPL ATT DUB OCIL

 

 

Works
Poetry collections
  • An Easter Vacation (London: Lawrence & Bullen 1893/NY: EP Dutton 1894).
  • The Elf-Errant (London: Lawrence & Bullen/NY: EP Dutton 1894); Do. [reps.] (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1895, 1902).
  • Songs of the Glens of Antrim (Edin/London: W. Blackwood & Sons 1900), another ed. (1901).
  • More Songs of the Glens of Antrim (Edin/London: W. Blackwood & Sons 1921).
  • Song and More Songs of the Glens of Antrim [combined ed.] (NY: Macmillan 1922).
  • From Two Point of View (Edin/London: W Blackwood & Sons 1924).
  • Collected Poems of Moira O’Neill (Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood & Sons 1933; 1934), xii, 148pp. [no reprints recorded in BNB 1950-84].

 

Criticism
Terence Brown, Northern Voices, Poets from Ulster (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1975), p.690; Molly Keane [her dg.] in John Quinn, ed., A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (London: Methuen 1986), p.66. See also remarks in Ernest A. Boyd, Ireland’s Literary Renaissance (Maunsel 1916), as infra.

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Commentary
W. P. Ryan, The Irish Literary Revival (London 1894; NY: Lemma Rep. 1970), Miss Nesta Higginson (Moira O’Neill), another young Irish authoress - though outside the Society - has become familiar to a circle of readers through pretty poems and sketches in Blackwood’s Magazine. Antrim is her ground of inspiration. An Elf Errant, an Irish fairy tale from her pen, is promised for early publication. [148]

Ernest A. Boyd, Ireland’s Literary Renaissance (Dublin: Maunsel 1916)

Songs of the Glens of Antrim (1902) is the slenderest volume of verse to obtain general recognition which the Revival has produced. Twenty-five poems, each but a few stanzas, telling chiefly of the longing of an Irish peasant for his old home and the scenes associated with it - surely an unsubstantial bid for fame! Many poets have begun with equal modesty, but their first offerings have, as a rule, been followed by others more imposing.  Moira O’Neill escaped the [200] alternative usually presented to the young poet, who must either substantiate the promise of his first book, or see it pass out of memory. She made no attempt to exploit the vein which had brought her success, but rested at a point which would normally have been that of departure in search of further honours. The reason was doubtless that she fully recognised how insusceptible of expansion her little book was. At the same time we have to enquire why criticism was content to accept this new talent, without waiting for any riper development. The explanation is that Songs of the Glens of Antrim was so original, so novel and so perfect of its kind, that confirmation of the poet’s power was not required. Much had been said and written by Yeats and his colleagues of the force of the peasant element in the new Anglo-Irish literature, but many felt that precisely this element was far to seek in the work of the more prominent Irish writers. Moira O’Neill came, with a genuine peasant poetry, free from the intellectual subtleties held to be incompatible with the avowed folk-ideals of Yeats, and she convinced the sceptics. Corrymeela was as certainly good poetry as it was a natural utterance from the lips of an Irish peasant. When her verses were written the use of dialect was still rare amongst the poets - especially its serious use - and such of it as was employed had a certain anonymous character. Moira O’Neill localised her speech; she spoke the language of the Antrim Glens, and she demonstrated its application to literature. If her themes are not original, her manner of treating them was distinctly so. For the first time the voice of the Ulster countryside was heard, instead of the, even then, more familiar tones of Munster and Connacht.  Nowadays Anglo-Irish [201] literature covers the whole field of characteristically Irish life, though Ulster is still less articulate than the provinces of the South and West. Songs of the Glens of Antrim was in this respect a pioneer volume, which realised completely the purpose of its author. For that reason we admire her discretion in not forcing the note she instinctively struck. Her reward was an immediate measure of esteem which lasted, despite the seeming inadequacy of its occasion. The relative merit of those twenty-five poems may be judged from the fact that their claim upon the anthologist disputes upon equal terms that of Moira O’Neill’s more voluminous contemporaries.

pp.199-201; see full copy in Library > “Critical Classics” - as attached.

Stephen Gwynn, Irish Literature and Drama (London: Nelson 1936): ‘Moira O’Neill began to write her little poems in 1892; they were all published in Blackwood’s Mag., and the Blackwood house finally issued Songs of the Glens of Antrim ... one of the very few books which, if all the copies were destroyed, could probably be reproduced from oral tradition.’ ( p.139.) Also notes: M. O’Neill mother of M. J. Farrell, later Molly Keane.

Molly Keane gives an account of her as ‘practically a recluse’ in John Quinn, ed., A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (London: Methuen 1986) [p.66].

 

Quotations
“Lookin’ Back”: ‘Antrim hills and the wet rain fallin’ / Whiles ye are nearer than snow-tops keen:/Dreams o’ the night and a night-wind callin’, / What is the half of the world between?’ (Quoted in P. J. Kavanagh, Voices in Ireland, 1994, p.309.)

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References
Brian M. Walker [et al.], eds, Faces of Ireland (Appletree 1992) selects ‘Sea Wrack’ from Songs of the Glens of Antrim; bibl. includes Collected Poems (1933); born Cushendun, went eventually to Canada but returned to Ireland to live in Co. Wicklow, where she died at 90.

Anthologies: Moira O’Neill is anthologised in the following: W. B. Yeats, A Book of Irish Verse (Methuen 1895; 1900, 1912; 1920); Stopford A. Brooke and T W Rolleston, eds., A Treasury of Irish Poetry in the English Tongue; London; Smith, Elder, & Co. 1900) [with biog. notice]; The Wild Harp; A Selection from Irish Lyrical Poetry, printed at the Ballantyne Press, London; with decorations by C. M. Watts (London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd. MCMXIII [1908]) [with biog. notice]; Dublin Book of Irish Verse 1728-1909, ed. John Cooke (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis 1909); Brian M Walker, Art Ó Broin, and Sean MacMahon, Faces of Ireland 1875-1925, a photographic and literary picture of the past 4 vols in 1 (Belfast: Appletree 1992), ix, ‘Ulster’ [sect.], pp.7-[114] [with biog. notice.] Also noticed in P. J. Kavanagh, Voices in Ireland (1994) lived near Cushendall: poss. err.; see infra]. But omitted from Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904); Robinson & McDonagh, eds., Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1958), and Brendan Kennelly ed., Penguin Book of Irish Verse (1970) [Chk, Hoagland; Garrity; Saul; et al.]

John Cooke, ed., Dublin Book of Irish Verse 1728-1909 (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis 1909); no bio-dates; ‘Birds’ (”Sure maybe ye’ve heard the storm-thrush/Whistlin’ bould in March ... he’s never the bird for me ... the redbreast ... ‘Remember’, he sings, ‘Remember!’/Ay, thon’s the wee bird for me.”); ‘Cuttin’ Rushes’ (‘Yesterday, yesterday, or fifty years ago ... The day we cut the rushes on the mountain?’

Belfast Public Library holds The Elf-errant (1895, 1902); More Songs of the Glens of Antrim (1921).

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