Ella Young

Life

[ See Linde Lunney, “Ella Young”, in The Dictionary of Irish Biography (RIA 2009) - online. ]

Works
Poetry, Poems [Tower Press Booklet No. 4] (Dublin: Maunsel & Co. 1906) [DIL 1904]; Seed of the Pomegranite, Oceano 9 (priv. 1949) poems [20 copies only]; Smoke of Myrrh, [Oceano ?10] (1950) [25 copies]; The Rose of Heaven (Dublin: Colm O’Lochlainn, 1918), Do., another ed. [same publisher] (The Candle Press, 1920), poems; The Weird of Fionavar (Dublin: Talbot/London: T. Fisher Unwin 1922), poems.

Fiction, The Coming of Lugh (Maunsel & Co. 1905), tales; Do., another ed. (1909); ). Celtic Wonder Tales (Dublin: Maunsel & Co 1906) [see details]; The Wonder-Smith and His Son, tales (London: Longmans 1927); [?ed.], The Tangle-Coated Horse (Dublin: Maunsel 1929) [based on Fionn cycle]; The Unicorn with Silver Shoes, tales (NY: Longmans 1932) [freely based on Irish myth of the son of Balor, unicorn, djinn, &c.]; Celtic Legends (Leicester: Coll. of Arts and Crafts 1935) [14 tales from Irish mythology]. Also, ‘An Ancient Doctrine’ [on fairy faith]; in Irish Review (Aug. 1912).

Autobiography & Miscellaneous, Flowering Dusk: Things Remembered Accurately and Inaccurately (London: Longmans 1945), 356pp.; ‘Celtic Mythology’ in Irish Year Book (Dublin: Sinn Féin [c.1919]), pp.249-64

Bibliographical details
Celtic Wonder Tales, retold by Ella Young (Dublin: Maunsel 1910), 202pp. [ill. & decorated by Maud Gonne, and Do. [rep. edn.] (Edinburgh: Floris Book Club 1988), 210pp. CONTENTS: “Earth-shapers”; “Spear of Victory”; “A Good Action”; “Sons of Gobhaun”; “Cow of Plenty”; “Coming of Lugh”; “Eric-fine of Lugh”; “Great Battle”, “Inisfail”; “Golden Fly”; “Children of Lir”; “Lucky Child”; “Conary Mor”. Ills.: For the Children of Lir [front.]; For the Cow of Plenty [facing p.60]; For the Golden Fly [facing p.130]; For the Children of Lir [facing p.154]; also emblems at end of each story. (Accessible in Internet Archive - online; accessed 29.04.2022.)

Criticism
Monographs: Padraic Colum, Ella Young: An Appreciation (London & NY: Longman 1931); Rose Murphy, Ella Young: Irish Mystic and Rebel (Dublin: Liffey Press 2008), 170pp.

Articles:  Eve Riehl, ‘The shining land of Ella Young’ in  Dublin Magazine, 33:2 (April-June 1958), pp.17–22; W. W. Lyman, ‘Ella Young: A Memoir’ in  éire-Ireland, 8:3 (1975), pp.65–69.

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Commentary
Ernest A. Boyd, Ireland’s Literary Renaissance (Dublin: Maunsel 1916) - writes jointly of Ella Young and Susan Mitchell: ‘Ella Young and Susan Mitchell, on the other hand, could not have written as they do, had there been no Theosophical Movement. One slender volume each, Poems (1906) and The Living Chalice (1908), is all that they have offered, so far, for criticism—a somewhat unsubstantial basis upon which to rest judgment. Both have evidently felt the touch of mysticism, and have essayed to express the profounder emotions awakened in them. If they are a little inarticulate, and profit too eagerly by the help afforded to their inexperience by more eloquent elders, we are content that this should be so, rather than that they should sacrifice obviously genuine feeling for the sake of greater independence or facility of rhyme. The Star of Knowledge, Twilight and The Virgin Mother vindicate the original quality of Ella Young’s verse, and dispel the doubts which arise from A Dream of Tir-nan-oge—that prolonged echo. ’ (p.255.)

M. Kelly Lynch Dictionary of Irish Literature, ed. Robert Hogan (1979): ‘The Unicorn [&c.] take great liberties with figures out of Celtic myth in telling the adventures of the son of Balor, a unicorn who is calmed only by listening to epic poetry, a djinn who ends up in a Dublin zoo, and a mischeivous Pooka. In the gentle irony which gives this book a refreshing freedom from sentimentality, the Unicorn with silver shoes rmeains one of the outstanding examples of the lyrical cadences of the Irish imagination’. See also under Countess Markievicz [on founding of Bean na h-Eireann].

R. F. Foster, Life of Yeats: Vol. I: ‘The Apprentice Mage’ 1997): Confidante of Maud Gonne and Yeats’s bête noir, Ella Young ‘talks elementary text books all day, when she is let, with an air of personal inspiration’, according to a letter of WBY. (q.p.)

Quotations
Untamed Dublin (ers) - on her experiences with Inghinidhe na hÉireann: ‘In a room perched at the head of a rickety staircase and overlooking a narrow street, I have about eighty denizens of untamed Dublin: newsboys, children who have played in street alleys all their lives, young patriot girls and boys who can scarcely write their own names ... / Eager-eyed, drawing in breaths of rapturous admiration, their thin hardship-sculptured faces flushed with wrath and pride, they stand there adding new names to the hero-names that they have cherished ever since they could put names together: Cu-Cullion, to Parnell; Brown Diarmid, to Robert Emmet...” (Extract in Margaret Ward, ed., In Their Own Voice: women and Irish nationalism (Dublin: Attic Press 1995; cited in review notice by Liz Curtis, in Fortnight, April, 1996, p.35.)

Willie & Maud: ‘I see her standing with W. B.Yeats, the poet, in front of Whistler’s “Miss Alexander” in the Dublin gallery where some pictures by Whistler are astonishing a select few. These two people delight the bystanders more than the pictures. Everyone stops looking at canvas and manoeuvres himself or herself into a position to watch these two. They are almost of equal height. Yeats has a dark, romantic cloak about him; Maud Gonne has a dress that changes colour as she moves. They pay no attention to the stir they are creating; they stand there discussing the picture. / I catch sight of them again in the reading room of the National Library. They have a pile of books between them and are consulting the books and each other. No one else is consulting a book. Everyone is conscious of those two as the denizens of a woodland lake might be conscious of a flamingo, or of a Japanese heron, if it suddenly descended among them. / Later, in the narrow curve of Grafton Street, I notice people are stopping and turning their heads. It is Maud Gonne and the poet. She has a radiance as of sunlight. Yeats, that leopard of the moon, holds back in a leash a huge lion-coloured Great Dane - Maud Gonne’s dog, Dagda.’ (Quoted in Conor Cruise O’Brien, ‘Talk of the Town’, review of The Gonne Letters, ed. A. N. Jeffares and Ann Macbride White, Norton 1992, in Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1993, pp.117-21.)

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References
John Cooke, ed., Dublin Book of Irish Verse, no bio-dates; selects “Cleena” (‘.. Mournful wind, your grief cannot avail her ..’); “The Wind from the West” (‘Blow high, blow low,/O wind from the west: / You come from the country / I love the best’); “My Lady of Dreams”; ‘A Dream-garden” (‘[...] I’ll light the way before you / With a rainbow-gleam’).

Dictionary of Irish Literature, ed. Robert Hogan (Greenwood 1979), notice on Ella Young my M. Kelly Lynch, pp.726-27. Also cited in Anne Ulry Colman, Dictionary of Nineteenth-century Irish women Poets (Galway: Kenny"s Bookshop 1996)

Margaret Ward, ed., In their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism (Dublin: Attic 1996), reprints Ella Young’s memoir of work in Dublin slums with Inghinidhe na hÉireann [q.pp.].

Belfast Central Public Library holds Celtic Wonder Tales, retold by Ella Young, ill. and decorated by Maud Gonne (Maunsel 1910, rep. Floris Book Club, Edin. 1988), 210pp,, contains ‘Earth-shapers’ ‘Spear of Victory’ ‘A Good Action’ ‘Sons of Gobhaun’ ‘Cow of Plenty’ ‘Coming of Lugh’ ‘Eric-fine of Lugh’ ‘Great Battle’ Inisfail’ ‘Golden Fly, ‘Children of Lir, ‘Lucky Child’ ‘Conary Mor’.

Notes
Violet Merville: Ella Young’s sister Miss Elizabeth Young [pseud. Violet Merville], played the part of Deirdre in the play of that title by George “AE” Russell in George Coffey’s house, 5 Harcourt Tce., Dublin, 2 Jan. 1902. (Denson, ed. Leeters from AE, London: Abelard-Schuman 1961, pls., between pp.36-37.) [See also Denson"s note on Ella"s dream under Maud Gonne - supra.

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