Dora Sigerson Shorter

Life
1866-1918; b. 16 Aug., Dublin; eldest dg. of 4 children to George Sigerson and former Hester Varian; friend of Katharine Tynan and Alice Furlong; Irish literary revival poet, associated with Alice Furlong and Katherine Tynan; contrib. Irish Monthly from 1888, and to the Samhain in 1902; iss. Verses (1893); m. Clement Shorter, critic and ed. of The Sphere [var. Illustrated London News], July 1895, and lived in London thereafter; publs. The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems (Lane 1898); her Collected Poems (was introduced by George Merdith; drew front. port. of the poet for Louise Imogen Guiney’s selection Mangan"s poems (1897); acc. Tynan in a tribute, in The Sad Years, (1921), she ‘died of a broken heart’ after 1916 executions. PI JMC IF DIW DIL SUTH FDA OCIL

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Bibliographical details
The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems, by Dora Sigerson (Mrs Clement Shorter) [1897; 2nd edn.] (London & NY: John Lane, The Bodley Head MDCCCXCVIII [1908]), vii, 100pp. [Note, iii; Contents, iv-vii]. CONTENTS: The Fairy Changeling [1]; A Ballad of Marjorie]; [3]; The Priest’s Brother [6]; The Ballad of the Little Black Hound [9]; The Rape of the Baron’s Wine [15]; Cean Duv Deelish [19]; Banagher Rhue [21]; The Fair Little Maiden [23]; At Christmas Time]; 25]; A Weeping Cupid [26]; The Lover [28]; A Bird from the West [30]; All Souls’ Eve; [32]; An Imperfect Revolution [34]; Love [36]; Wishes [38]; Cupid Slain [39]; What Will You Give? [40]; A Meadow Tragedy [42]; An Eclipse [43]; The Scallop Shell [44]; With a Rose [45]; For Ever [46]; The Blow Returned [47]; Vale [48]; The Skeleton in the Cupboard [49]; You Will Not Come Again [51]; The Wreckage [52]; I am the World [53]; A New Year [55]; The Kine of My Father [57]; Sanctuary [59]; An Eastern God [61 [A Friend in Need [63]; In a Wood [64]; A Vagrant Heart [65]; When You are on the Sea [68]; My Neighbour’s Garden [70]; An Irish Blackbird [72]; Death of Gormlaith [73]; Unknown Ideal [75]; p. viiBeware [77]; The Old Maid [78]; Wirastrua [80]; Questions [81 [A Little Dog [82]; “I Prayed so Eagerly” [ 85]; “When the Dark Comes”] [ 86]; Distant Voices [87]; The Ballad of the Fairy Thorn-Tree [89]; The Suicide’s Grave [95]. (Digital copy by David Price in 2009 available at Gutenberg Project - online; 10.03.2024.]

The Tricolour, Poems of the Irish Revolution (Dublin: Maunsel & Roberts 1922), 72pp., [posthumous], ill. with port. and photo of the monument she sculpted for Easter Rising martyrs. Includes eight poems from The Sad Year, viz., “The Tricolour” [see extract]; “The Sacred Fire”; “Corruption”; “Sick I Am and Sorrowful”; “In the Years of Sarsfield”; “A Catholic to his Ulster Brother”; “The Wreath, Easter 1917”; “The Prisoner”; “Ourselves Alone”; “The Dead Soldier, in Memory of Thomas Ashe” [‘My soul is crying for a dead soldier’]; “The Star - in Memory of Patrick Pearse”, and “The Tree Uprooted - in memory of Roger Casement”. Do. [new edn.,] revised [by] Dan Barry, with poems added from other vols. and memoir by Katharine Tynan from The Sad Years (Cork: CFN [1926])

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Criticism
Katherine Tynan, ‘Dora Sigerson: A Tribute and Some Memories', in Shorter, The Sad Years (London: Constable & Co. 1918, 1921), pp.vii-xii.

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Commentary
W. P. Ryan, The Irish Literary Revival (1894), Dora Sigerson, her verses is an unequal book, with fibre, philosophy, fretful introspect, storm-and-doubt unrest, and much which is plainly poetry. Moods not common with the Irish muse are represented, also moods which are common, though Miss Sigerson does not make then as poetical as the others ... her sister [&, 148].

Katie Donovan, in Irish Times (10 Sept. 1995), reviews Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, ed., Voices on the Wind, Women Poets of the Celtic Twilight (New Island Books 1995) noting remarks in introductory essay on Shorter’s knowledge of ‘traditional lore’ as being exceptional among the literary revival female poets of her generation; reviewer cites the poems “The Fairy Changeling” and “The White Witch”.

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Quotations
Verses (1893): “Con Duv Deelish” [2nd stanza: ‘Cean Duv Deelish, I cry to thee / Beyond the word / Beyond the sea, / Thou being dead. / Where has thou hidden from the beat / Of crushing hooves and tearing feet / Thy dear black head?’, and ending, ‘I loved thee too well for this to be.’] “King and Father” [‘Lord of the Universe, Marker of all! / ... Endless thy Glory, O king of all kings / ... When the sun in his horror, recoiled at the sight / ... O Crucified Lord upon Calvary Hill!’ / ... Ready to hear when we kneel on the sod / Thou our Redeemer, or Father, or God!’] “Footsteps” [‘in every man this world doth hold / Two selves are cast in that human mould. / If he harken but to the voice of one / Then heaven us his when his work is done; / But if to the other his ear doth turn, / Deeper in his heart shall ever burn ...’].

“The Tricolour” is a short prose piece: ‘[...] A wounded prisoner of war by the name of James Connolly was slain. So labour was shot down because it dared to be discontented with its fortunes. And idealism was shot down because it dared to dream greater dreams than were allowed to small nationalities ... On Easter Monday Sheehy Skeffington, the pacifist, was murdered secretly without trial / Thus Peace was shot down by a lunatic, because he got in the way of militarism’.

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References
D. J. O’Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912); O’Donoghue speaks respectfully of her as a contemporary writer.

Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature, ed. (Washington: University of America 1904); gives 5 poems incl. ‘Cean Duv Deelish’.

Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), married to ed. of The Sphere, C. K. Shorter; verse incl. ‘Do Little and Do Well’, a fairy tale; ‘The Country House Party’; d. 1918; lists fiction, The Father Confessor, stories of death and danger (1900); Herself; Hatchways; Jamesie (1918).

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, p. 779, George Sigerson biog., ‘dg. became well-known poet’.

John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Harlow: Longmans 1988); 1866-1918, b. Dublin; dg. George Sigerson, Irish surgeon and man of letters; m. C. K. Shorter, English critic and journalist, attracted to her by a photo in the London papers; as Mrs Shorter, she wrote gloomy stories collected as The Father Confessor (1900); her m. Hester wrote the similarly gloomy novel, A Ruined Place, or the Last Macmanus of Dramroosh (1890) [cited parenthetically in short form under Dora Sigerson Shorter, in DIL]. BL 2.

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Arthur Quiller Couch, ed., Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1918 (new ed. 1929), 864; also anthologised in Brooke/Rolleston (1900); Brown; Cooke; Fitzhenry; Graves; Hoagland; Robinson, Sharp/Mathay [Lyra Celtica]; Tynan, and Yeats. Also in Robert Lynd, ed., ‘Voices of the New Ireland’, Ireland a Nation (1919).

Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, Voices on the Wind, Women Poets of the Celtic Twilight (New Island Books 1995) [with Katharine Tynan; Eva Gore-Booth; Susan Mitchell; Nora Chesson Hopper; Ethna Carbery].

Belfast Public Library holds A Legend of Glendalough (1919); also Glendalough and other Ballads (1921); Madge Lindsay and other poems (1913) [15 poems], 42pp.; New Poems (1912); Poems (n.d.); The Tricolour (1922); The Troubadour (1922); Do., and other poems (1910); Verses (1893). Also, under Sigerson, D., Ballads and Poems (1899); The Collected Poems (1907); Dull Day in London (1920); The Fairy-Changeling and other poems (1898); The Sad Years (1919); Story and Son of Black Roderick (1906); Ancient Irish Poems on Howth (1917); The Woman Who Went to Hell (London: De la More [title page sic] Press [n.d.]), 42pp.

Kennys Books (Cat. 2004) lists New poems. [3d edn.] (Dublin: Maunsel 1921), 41pp.; The tricolour; Poems of the Irish Revolution (Dublin: Maunsel & Roberts 1922), 71, [1]pp. front. (port.), pl., Do. [another edn.] (Cork: C.F.N. 1976), 48pp.: ill., ports.; New Poems (Dublin: Maunsel 1912), 41pp., and Do [ 2nd edn.] (Dublin & London: Maunsel & Co., 1913), 41pp. [Inscribed by Thomas Bodkin]; A legend of Glendalough, and other ballads (Dublin & London: Maunsel & Co. 1919), 40pp. [ The deer-stone, a legend of Glendalough; The woman who went to hell, an Irish legend; Kathleen's charity; The white witch; The fetch; The ballad of the little black hound; The priest's brother]; The sad years (London: Constable & Co. 1921), xv, 86pp., [9] leaves of plates: ill. [‘Dora Sigerson, a tribute and some memories, by Katharine Tynan', pp.vii-xii]; As the sparks fly upward: poems and ballads ( London: A. Moring [190-?]), 34pp.; The story and song of Black Roderick (London: De La More Press 1906), 82pp.; Verses (London: Elliot Stock 1893), 134pp.

Notes
Mebdh McGuckian, ‘The Timely Clapper’, short contrib. in ‘The State of Poetry’, special issue of Krino, ed., Gerald Dawe and Jonathan Williams (Winter 1993), pp.45-46, quotes extensively from the 1907 intro. to her Collected Poems in which he remarks on ‘the timely clapper’ of common verse in the course of praising her mastery of false rhyme.

The Father Confessor: Stories of Death and Danger (1900): ‘The priest stood at the bedside of the dying woman, he looked down upon her and won dered at her face. Her hair had turned pure white, and she so young. Her eyes were the eyes of a hare, full of watching, always seem ing to be expecting some sudden fright. Her nervous hands, for ever twitching, kept pulling at the blankets and moving unceasingly.’ (Quoted at Amazon - online; accessed 10.03.2024).

Clement Shorter: Shorter introduced a selection of the poems of Lionel Johnson (1908) and signed "Great Missenden, Buck[ingham]s[hire].

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