Ellen OLeary (1831-89)
Life
b. Co. Tipperary, sister of John OLeary, she was an active Fenian, mortgaging her property to raise £200 [var. £2,000] for escape of James Stephens from Richmond Prison, 1865; lived in Tipperary, from 1867 to the return of her brother in 1885; elected one of 2 treasurers of Ladies Land League, 1881; moved to Dublin, 1887; author of To God and Ireland True, contrib. to The Nation; |
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co-ed., The Irish People; also contrib. to The Irishman, Boston Pilot, and Irish Fireside; contr. 5 poems to The Irish Monthly (March 1887 to May 1889); her poems issued, after her own final corrections, as Lays of Country, Home and Friends (1891), edited by T. W. Rolleston,; a selection appeared in Alfred Miles, The Poets and Poetry of the Century (1892), with a sketch of the Fenian poet by W. B. Yeats. PI ODNB DBIV MKA DIW DIH OCIL |
Works T. W. Rolleston, intro., Lays of Country, Home and Friends [by Ellen OLeary] (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker 1891), with port., memoir, and an introduction by Charles G. Duffy; includes Ellen OLeary by Rose Kavanagh.
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Commentary
Rose Kavanagh, Ellen OLeary (d. 15 Oct. 1889). |
Asleep, asleep! God loved you well,
My dear one, when He let you lay
Lifes burthen down that autumn day.
Twas brave borne. Who knew you learned
How white a truth true living brings
To glorify the homeliest things.
Who knew you learned the noble lore
Of boundless faith and hope and love
For Ireland here, and God above. |
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—The Irish Monthly, 18, 209 (Nov. 1890), p.609; reprinted in Rose Kavanagh and Her Verses (1909), p.69. (See under Kavanagh, q.v.; also available in Irish Monthly at JSTOR [online; accessed 03.07.2010]; |
Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde (1974): Charles Hubert Oldham collaborated with Maud Gonne in published Ellen OLearys posthumous verse, Lays of Country, Home and Friends. (Daly, op. cit. p.203, n.)
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Quotations See her poem inscribed to Rose Kavanagh, q.v., supra.
References
Dictionary of National Biography calls Ellen OLeary a Fenian poet; contrib. Irish People, and helped James Stephens with his organisation.
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), selects To God and Ireland True and My Old Home.
Brian McKenna, Irish Literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978) , cites Lays of Country, Home and Friends (1890), and criticism by Charles Gavan Duffy (Dublin University Review, 1886) T. W. Rolleston (Intro., Lays), and W. B. Yeats, Ellen OLeary [dates], in Poets and Poetry of the Century, V (1892), rep. in Uncollected Prose. Also, some recollections by Rosa Mulholland, Irish Monthly 39 (1911). She was primarily assoc. with the Irish People.
John Cooke, ed., The Dublin Book of Irish Verse (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1909): bio-dates 1831-1889; selects To God and Ireland True [I sit beside my darlings grave, / Who in the prison died / And though my tears fall thick and fast / I think of him with pride. [...] And oh, my darling, I am true / To God - to Ireland - and to you!).
Belfast Public Library holds Lays of Country, Home and Friends (1891).
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