Murray is born in Macroom, County Cork on January 17, 1873, the seventh of the eleven children of Cornelius Murray and Honora Murray (née Kelleher). He is educated at St. Patrick’s Teacher Training College in Drumcondra, Dublin. He works as a schoolteacher and in 1900 is appointed headmaster of the national school in Rathduff, County Cork. His first play, The Wheel of Fortune, is produced in 1909 by the Little Theatre in Cork, a theatre he co-founded with Daniel Corkery, Con O’Leary and Terence MacSwiney. The play is revised and renamed Sovereign Love in 1913. In 1915, he moves to Dublin as headmaster of the Model Schools at Inchicore, where he remains until his retirement from teaching in 1932.
Murray’s play Birthright is performed in the Abbey Theatre in 1910 and establishes him as a writer of force. In all, he writes fifteen plays, all of which are produced by the Abbey. His two most highly regarded works are Maurice Harte (1912) and Autumn Fire (1924). Both of these and Birthright are performed in New York City on Broadway, with Autumn Fire having a run of 71 performances. He also writes an autobiographical novel Spring Horizon (1937).
It has been stated both by A. DeGiacomo and by R. Allen Cave that, in the Art competitions at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, Murray is awarded a bronze medal for his play Birthright. However, according to the official record for the games, although Murray is a participant in the literature category with this play and also with Maurice Harte, he does not win a medal.
In his later years, Murray holds a number of significant positions: director of the Authors’ Guild of Ireland, vice-president of the Irish Academy of Letters and president of the Irish Playwrights’ Association. He is awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) by the National University of Ireland in 1949. He dies on March 7, 1959, at his home on Sandymount Strand, Ballsbridge, Dublin, of viral pneumonia, his wife having predeceased him by fifteen years. His extensive papers, containing scripts of almost all of his fifteen plays, correspondence, clippings, reviews, and other material, are held in the National Library of Ireland (NLI).
David Patrick Moran (Irish: Dáithí Pádraig Ó Móráin), better known as simply D. P. Moran, Irish journalist, activist and cultural-political theorist, dies on January 31, 1936. He is known as the principal advocate of a specifically Gaelic CatholicIrish nationalism during the early 20th century. Associated with the wider Celtic Revival, he promotes his ideas primarily through his journal, The Leader, and compilations of his articles such as the book The Philosophy of Irish Ireland.
Moran is born in Manor, a townland in Waterford, the youngest of twenty children born to James Moran, a builder, and Elizabeth Moran (née Casey). One of his brothers goes on to serve on the defense team of Patrick O’Donnell.
Despite the failure of the 1893 Home Rule Bill and the division of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in 1891, nationalists take heart from Douglas Hyde‘s 1892 speech, entitled “The Necessity for De-anglicising Ireland.” Moran builds upon this thesis and provides a wider ideology for enthusiasts, particularly after the re-unification of most of the nationalist parties from 1900.
In his 1905 text The Philosophy of Irish-Ireland, Moran argues that to be Irish requires:
the use of the Irish language
membership in the Roman Catholic Church
an anti-materialist outlook on life
the playing of only Gaelic games
Though a sponsor of the use of Irish, he never becomes fluent in the language himself. He emphasises the use of English in 1908–09 as “an active, vigilant, and merciless propaganda in the English language.” In the longer term, when Irish becomes again the language of the people, its use enables a de facto censorship of any foreign and unwelcome ideas written in English.
While Moran argues that the idea of “the Gael” is one that can assimilate others, he also feels that it will be hard if not impossible for members of the Church of Ireland who support the British Empire to ever qualify as Irish, being “resident aliens.” This extends to Anglo-Irish literature. He rejects the Abbey Theatre and questions Yeats‘ genius. He once speaks out against the influence Britain has over Irish Universities, stating, “We are all Palemen now.” In the matter of religious differences, Daniel O’Connell had said in 1826 that “the [Roman] Catholics of Ireland are a nation.” Moran moves beyond that, affirming in 1901 that “…the Irish Nation is de facto a Catholic nation.” He is virulent in his opposition to female suffrage.
Moran’s articles frequently contrast “Belfast” with “Ireland,” yet hope that Belfast can eventually change and assimilate. He feels that Ulster unionists should “… be grateful to the Irish nation for being willing to adopt them.” His paper publishes numerous articles by the future TDArthur Clery (writing under the pen name “Chanel”), who advocates partition on the grounds that Ulster unionists are a separate nation, but Moran himself disagrees and refuses to concede the legitimacy of a northern Protestant identity.
When Irish republicans initiate the Irish War of Independence in 1919, widescale anti-Catholic rioting breaks out in Belfast in 1920 and 1922. Moran identifies this as being caused by Orangeism, which he describes as “a sore and a cancer” in Ireland. He also alleges that “bigotry on the part of Catholics in the Six Counties is immediately due to Orange bigotry.”
Moran is initially a supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party, believing that the separatism advocated by Arthur Griffith‘s Sinn Féin is impracticable; however, he opposes John Redmond‘s support of the British World War I effort.
Moran supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty agreed in 1921–22 and sees the partition of Ireland as beneficial for a truly Irish culture in the Irish Free State. This causes a sea-change in his opinions; from now on Northern Ireland can be safely ignored, along with what he sees as the English evils of “free thought, free trade, and free literature.” He claims Irish life and culture has to be protected from foreign influences, including the twin evils of the music hall and the English press. The new jazz music of the 1920s and other imported cultural elements are deprecated as “imported debasement and rot.”
On January 9, 1901, Moran marries Theresa Catherine, daughter of Thomas Francis O’Toole, a former Parnellite mayor of Waterford. They have four sons and one daughter.
Moran dies suddenly at his home in Skerries, Dublin, on January 31, 1936. His daughter, Nuala, who has written for the paper since the early 1920s, generally on artistic and social matters, takes over the running of the paper on his death, though it is then much diminished in size and influence. Nuala, who never marries, retains control of The Leader until it ceases publication in 1971.
Davidson is the sixth of ten children of clerk of petty session, Edward Ellice Davidson, and Lucy Rising Davidson (née Doe). Her mother dies in 1888, and it is presumed that she receives a private education but as the family are not affluent, the details are unclear. She goes on to attend the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA) from 1895 to 1905. While at the DMSA, she wins prizes in 1895 and 1896 and is awarded a scholarship and free studentship at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) in 1897, the same year her father dies. She completes her studies in 1905. In the early 1910s, she is living in Rathmines and spends some time in England and Wales.
Davidson is commissioned by Switzer’s department store on Grafton Street to draw costumes in 1899. In 1909, her painting After Rain is exhibited by the Dublin Sketching Club, with her continuing to show work there until 1920. She exhibits The Bonfire with the Water Colour Society of Ireland in 1912, becoming a committee member in 1934 and continuing to exhibit with them until 1954. In 1914, she is one of the artists included in a sale of paintings to aid Belgian refugees. She is first exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1914, with The Student. Her painting exhibited by the RHA in 1916, The Harbour, St. Ives, demonstrates an influence from Stanhope Forbes and the Newlyn School, with a bright palette and contrasting illumination, which become characteristic of her work. She illustrates C. H. Bretherton’s collection of humorous poems and recollections about London Zoo, A Zoovenir (1919).
Davidson holds a joint exhibition with Mainie Jellett in 1920, at Mill’s Hall, Merrion Row, Dublin. Jellett produces a pencil portrait of Davison (pictured above), which shows her in a straw hat she frequently wears. The RHA exhibits Davidson’s oil painting, The Flax Pullers, in 1921. This work shows an influence from Paul Henry and French Impressionism in her use of colour-blocking. In the early 1920s, she travels to Switzerland, Belgium, and France, producing works such as Fish Market, Bruges. She lives in Paris in the late 1920s, exhibiting at the Salon de la Societé Nationale in 1924 and 1930. She places a self-portrait in her depiction of a peasant gathering, The Country Races. Reproductions of her drawing of Leinster House and Christ Church Cathedral by Bulmer Hobson are included in A Book of Dublin (1929). Her landscape, Low Tide, Wicklow, which is exhibited at the RHA in 1934, and Boats at Wicklow, Dusk show her ability to depict reflections in water. She continues to paint scenes of rural life, including Cottages – Keel, Achill, which shows an influence from Jack Butler Yeats in her use of space and colour. The fact that her family is not wealthy likely influences her choice of poorer people as her subjects, depicting them in a sympathetic manner. Her work is part of the painting event in the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics.
Davidson’s paintings are exhibited at the Contemporary Picture Galleries, Dublin in 1930, alongside Yeats, Evie Hone, and Harry Kernoff. She is a member of the Picture Hire Club, 24 Molesworth Street, Dublin from 1941 to 1942, and is a frequent contributor to the Munster Fine Arts Club. Her work is exhibited at the Salon des Beaux Arts, Paris, the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and in Amsterdam. A large number of her works from the 1930s show the Irish-speaking area of Galway, Claddagh, such as Night in Claddagh, exhibited with the RHA in 1933. Her Irish landscapes, such as Claddagh Cottages, are included in the Oireachtas Art Exhibitions from 1932 to 1946. From around 1934, she is a member of the Society of Dublin Painters, exhibiting with them from 1939 to 1954. She influences the Society’s move toward the avant-garde in the 1940s. She is elected associate to the RHA in 1940 and continues to exhibit there until her death. Her 1946 work, Gorta, shows influence from Zola, Rilke, Dostoyevsky and Picasso.
Davidson teaches drawing at her studio at 1 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin. Her pupils include Bea Orpen, Anne Yeats, and Mo Irwin. She also is a teacher at a number of Dublin schools, such as Belgrave school, Rathmines, Wesley College, St. Stephen’s Green, and Castle Park School, Dalkey. She travels to Abbeyleix, County Laois, once a week to teach at Glenbawn boarding school.
As well as painting, Davidson writes a number of plays, short stories, and monologues under a pseudonym, “Ulick Burke.” In 1927, a collection of her poems and Donegal rhymes is published. In 1931, Hilton Edwards directs her stage play Bride, at the Gate Theatre. Her short story, Her Only Son, is published in The Bell under a pseudonym in 1942. In 1935, she is a founder-member of the Torch Theatre, Dublin. She designs scenery, and is the co-director with Hugh Hyland in 1936, under the stage name “Jennifer Maude.”
Davidson dies at her home at 4 Wilton Terrace, Dublin on March 29, 1954. She is buried in an unmarked grave in Mount Jerome Cemetery. The National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) holds her 1938 portrait of Yeats, as well as her crayon drawing of Sarah Purser. She is a regular attendee at Purser’s “Second Tuesdays” gatherings. The Abbey Theatre holds her portrait of Joseph Holloway. She bequeaths The Golden Shawl to the Hugh Lane Gallery, which is a large self-portrait. Two of her works are included in the NGI’s 1987 exhibition, Irish Women Artists from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day.
Fay is born on August 30, 1870, at 10 Lower Dorset Street, Dublin, the eldest son of four children of William Patrick Fay, a government clerk, and his wife, Martha Fay (née Dowling). He is educated at Belvedere College, Dublin, where he learns shorthand and typing, before leaving to become a secretary for an accountancy firm in Dublin. From an early age he has a passion for the theatre and immerses himself in books on the subject, becoming a drama expert. His brother, William George Fay, shares his enthusiasm and they take part in many amateur productions, setting up the Ormonde Dramatic Company in 1891.
Fay is an ardent nationalist, and Arthur Griffith appoints him drama critic for his newspaper, the United Irishman (1899–1902), where he develops his ideas on how the theatre should be run. Initially in favour of plays in the Irish language, he soon abandons this as unworkable. In May 1901 he attacks W. B. Yeats for his faulty notions about theatre and even his work as a dramatist, ending with the fiercely nationalistic assertion that “there is a herd of Saxon and other swine fattening on us. They must be swept into the sea with the pestilent breed of West Britons with which we are troubled, or they will sweep us there.” Yeats’s and Lady Gregory‘s next play is Cathleen ni Houlihan.
In 1902, Fay writes a famous article advocating a national theatre company that will “be the nursery of an Irish dramatic literature which, while making a world-wide appeal, would see life through Irish eyes.” He is a member of his brother’s National Dramatic Society, which merges with the Irish Literary Theatre in 1902 to form the Irish National Theatre Society, the originating body of the Abbey Theatre. The following year Yeats declares that the national theatre owes its existence to the two Fay brothers. Fay soon abandons Griffith and begins to champion the cause of Yeats.
An excellent tragic actor, Fay can make audiences forget his less than five feet six-inch stature through the power of his voice. When the Abbey Theatre opens on December 27, 1904, he stars in Yeats’s On Baile’s Strand as Cú Chulainn, a role he makes his own. He spends much time training the other actors. As an elocution teacher he has no equal. One play has Yeats leaving with his “head on fire” because of the quality of the voices on stage. Yeats dedicates his play The King’s Threshold (1904) with the words: “In memory of Frank Fay and his beautiful speaking in the character of Seanchan.”
Fay has a close but turbulent relationship with his brother William, whom he defers to in all theatrical matters except acting. Their heated arguments sometimes lead to blows. His temper is always volatile, and he is prone to histrionics and fits of depression. After 1905, the Abbey Theatre becomes a limited company owing to the patronage of Annie Horniman, and the Fays lose most of their control, which results in much tension and bitterness. In 1907, Fay plays Shawn Keogh in the first production of The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge.
Disagreements with Yeats over the approach to choosing and staging of plays comes to a head late in late 1907 and the Fays resign on January 13, 1908. On March 13 they are suspended from the Irish National Theatre Society. They tour the United States with Charles Frohman before separating. Fay then tours England in minor Shakespearean roles and melodrama. Between 1912 and 1914, Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Mary Plunkett attempt to persuade him to become actor-manager of an Irish theatre. In 1918 he returns to the Abbey Theatre in two short-lived revivals of Yeats’s The Hour Glass and The King’s Threshold. He retires to Dublin permanently in 1921, teaching elocution and directing plays in local colleges.
Fay marries, in 1912, Freda, known as “Bird.” They live at Upper Mount Street, Dublin, and have one son, Gerard, who becomes a popular writer and memoirist. Fay dies on January 2, 1931, having never really recovered from the death of his wife, and is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery. He is credited with creating the Abbey Theatre style of acting, which becomes internationally known, and influences many other schools of acting. He wanted actors to behave as naturally as possible and to speak the lines as people would in real life, rather than with an exaggerated stage delivery. His training is a major influence on subsequent generations, as actors learned to “speak words with quiet force, like feathers borne on puffs of wind.”
(From: “Fay, Frank J. (Francis John)” by Patrick M. Geoghegan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009) | Pictured: Portrait of Frank Fay by John Butler Yeats, commissioned by Annie Horniman for the opening of the Abbey Theatre, December 27, 1904)
O’Hegarty is born on December 29, 1879, at Carrignavar, County Cork, to John and Katherine (née Hallahan) Hegarty. His parents’ families emigrate to the United States after the Great Famine, and his parents are married in Boston, Massachusetts. His father is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).
He is educated at North Monastery CBS, where he forms an enduring friendship with Terence MacSwiney. In 1888, his father dies of tuberculosis at the age of 42. Left destitute, his mother pawns her wedding ring to pay for an advertisement looking for work, and eventually becomes a cook.
He serves at the main Postal Sorting Office in Mount Pleasant, London, from 1902 to 1913. Along with J. J. Walsh, he spends three years at King’s College London, studying for the Secretary’s Office. While he succeeds in his studies, Walsh does not and returns to Ireland. O’Hegarty becomes the IRB representative for South East England and joins the Gaelic League and Sinn Féin and becomes a strong advocate of the Irish language. In 1905, he is elected secretary of the local Dungannon Club, which draws in as members Robert Lynd, Herbert Hughes and George Cavan. In 1907, as Sinn Féin’s London Secretary, he approves and signs the membership card of Michael Collins, later becoming friend and mentor to Collins.
He has to return to Ireland for a break due to overwork in 1909 and gives up some of his work for the Gaelic League. However, he takes over as editor of the IRB publication, Irish Freedom. It is in this publication that he famously writes, concerning the visit of King George V to Ireland in 1911: “Damn your concessions, England: we want our country!” In 1912, at the height of the Playboy riots, he writes four articles entitled “Art and the Nation” in Irish Freedom, which take a very liberal and inclusionist approach to Anglo-Irish literature and art in general but invokes the wrath of many of the paper’s readers.
In 1913, he is re-posted to Queenstown (present-day Cobh) as postmaster. He continues editing nationalist newspapers such as Irish Freedom (founded in 1910 and suppressed in December 1914 on account of its seditious content) and An tÉireannach and joins the Irish Volunteers. At the outbreak of war he is moved to Shrewsbury, probably on account of his political activities. In 1915, he marries Wilhelmina “Mina” Smyth, a schoolteacher and suffragist, and is then moved to Welshpool, Montgomeryshire. In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, he is opposed to physical force. In 1918, he refuses to take the British Oath of Allegiance and resigns his position in the Post Office.
O’Hegarty feels that the Abbey Theatre is “doing good for Ireland” and supports W. B. Yeats against attacks from Arthur Griffith and like-minded Nationalists. He opposes the extremist views of D. P. Moran, who seeks a Roman Catholic Irish-speaking Ireland.
He is Secretary of the Irish Department of Post and Telegraphs from 1922 to 1945. He is elected a member of the Irish Academy of Letters in 1954.
His son, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, is a founder of the Irish-language publishing house Sáirséal agus Dill. His daughter Gráinne, a harpist, marries Senator Michael Yeats, son of W. B. Yeats.
Liam Redmond, Irish character actor known for his stage, film and television roles, dies in Dublin on October 28, 1989, following a lengthy illness.
Redmond is born in Limerick, County Limerick, on July 27, 1913, one of four children born to cabinet-maker Thomas and Eileen Redmond. Educated at the Christian Brothers schools in Dublin, he later attends University College Dublin (UCD) and initially reads medicine before moving into drama.
While Director of the Dramatic Society, Redmond meets and marries the society’s secretary, Barbara MacDonagh, sister of Donagh MacDonagh and daughter of 1916 Easter Rising leader Thomas MacDonagh and Muriel Gifford. They have four children.
Redmond is invited to join the Abbey Theatre in 1935 as a producer by William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet. Yeats writes his play Death of Cú Chulainn for Redmond to star as Cú Chulainn, hero of one of Ireland’s foundational myths.
Redmond makes his acting debut at the Abbey Theatre in 1935 in Seán O’Casey‘s The Silver Tassie. His first stage appearance is in 1939 in New York City in The White Steed. After returning to Britain at the outbreak of World War II he is a regular on the London stage. He is one of the founders of the Writers’, Artists’, Actors’ and Musicians’ Association (WAAMA), a precursor of the Irish Actors’ Equity Association. His insistence that “part-time professionals” – usually civil servants who act on the side – should be paid a higher rate than professional actors for both rehearsal time and performance, effectively wiping out this class, raising the wages and fees of working actors.
Plunkett’s only grown sibling, a younger brother, from whom he is estranged from about 1916, for reasons not fully clear but connected to his mother’s will, is the noted British naval officer Sir Reginald Drax. Another younger brother dies in infancy.
The title passes to Plunkett at his father’s death in 1899 at a fairly young age. The young Lord Dunsany returns to Dunsany Castle in 1901 after war duty. In that year he is also confirmed as an elector for the Representative Peers for Ireland in the House of Lords.
In 1903, Plunkett meets Lady Beatrice Child Villiers (1880–1970), youngest daughter of Victor Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey, who is then living at Osterley Park. They marry in 1904. Their one child, Randal, is born in 1906. Lady Beatrice is supportive of her husband’s interests and helps him by typing his manuscripts, selecting work for his collections, including the 1954 retrospective short story collection, and overseeing his literary heritage after his death.
The Plunketts are socially active in Dublin and London and travel between homes in Meath, London and Kent, other than during the First and Second World Wars and the Irish War of Independence. He circulates with many literary figures of the time. To many of these in Ireland he is first introduced by his uncle, the co-operative pioneer Sir Horace Plunkett, who also helps to manage his estate and investments for a time. He is friendly, for example, with George William Russell, Oliver St. John Gogarty, and for a time, W. B. Yeats. He also socialises at times with George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells and is a friend of Rudyard Kipling.
In 1910 Plunkett commissions a two-story extension to Dunsany Castle, with a billiard room, bedrooms and other facilities. The billiard room includes the crests of all the Lords Dunsany up to the 18th.
Plunkett serves as a second lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards in the Second Boer War. Volunteering in World War I and appointed Captain in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, he is stationed for a time at Ebrington Barracks in Derry, Northern Ireland. Hearing while on leave of disturbances in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916, he drives in to offer help and is wounded by a bullet lodged in his skull. After recovery at Jervis Street Hospital and what is then the King George V Hospital (now St. Bricin’s Military Hospital), he returns to duty. His military belt is lost in the episode and later used at the burial of Michael Collins. Having been refused forward positioning in 1916 and listed as valuable as a trainer, he serves in the later war stages in the trenches and in the final period writing propaganda material for the War Office with MI7b. There is a book at Dunsany Castle with wartime photographs, on which lost members of his command are marked.
During the Irish War of Independence, Plunkett is charged with violating the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920, tried by court-martial on February 4, 1921, convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of 25 pounds or serve three months in prison without labour. The Crown Forces had searched Dunsany Castle and had found two double-barreled shotguns, two rook rifles, four Very pistols, an automatic pistol and a large quantity of pistol ammunition, along with shotgun and rifle ammunition.
During World War II, Plunkett signs up for the Irish Army Reserve and the British Home Guard, the two countries’ local defence forces, and is especially active in Shoreham, Kent, the English village bombed most during the Battle of Britain.
Plunkett’s fame arises chiefly from his prolific writings. He is involved in the Irish Literary Revival. Supporting the Revival, he is a major donor to the Abbey Theatre, and he moves in Irish literary circles. He is well acquainted with W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Percy French, George “AE” Russell, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Padraic Colum and others. He befriends and supports Francis Ledwidge, to whom he gives the use of his library, and Mary Lavin.
Plunkett makes his first literary tour to the United States in 1919 and further such visits up to the 1950s, in the early years mostly to the eastern seaboard and later, notably, to California. His own work and contribution to the Irish literary heritage are recognised with an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin.
In 1940, Plunkett is appointed Byron Professor of English in the University of Athens in Greece. Having reached Athens by a circuitous route, he is so successful that he is offered a post as Professor of English in Istanbul. However, he has to be evacuated due to the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, returning home by an even more complex route, his travels forming a basis for a long poem published in book form (A Journey, in 5 cantos: The Battle of Britain, The Battle of Greece, The Battle of the Mediterranean, Battles Long Ago, The Battle of the Atlantic, special edition January 1944). Olivia Manning‘s character Lord Pinkrose in her novel sequence the Fortunes of War is a mocking portrait of Dunsany in that period.
In 1947, Plunkett transfers his Meath estate in trust to his son and heir and settles in Kent at his Shoreham house, Dunstall Priory, not far from the home of Rudyard Kipling. He visits Ireland only occasionally thereafter and engages actively in life in Shoreham and London. He also begins a new series of visits to the United States, notably California, as recounted in Hazel Littlefield-Smith’s biographical Dunsany, King of Dreams.
In 1957, Plunkett becomes ill while dining with the Earl and Countess of Fingall at Dunsany, in what proves to be an attack of appendicitis. He dies in hospital in Dublin, at the age of 79, on October 25, 1957. He is buried in the churchyard of the ancient church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Shoreham, Kent. His funeral is attended by many family members, representatives of his old regiment and various bodies in which he had taken an interest, and figures from Shoreham. A memorial service is held at Kilmessan in County Meath, with a reading of “Crossing the Bar,” which coincides with the passing of a flock of geese.
Beatrice survives Plunkett, living mainly at Shoreham and overseeing his literary legacy until her death in 1970. Their son Randal succeeds to the barony and is in turn succeeded by his grandson, the artist Edward Plunkett. Plunkett’s literary rights pass from Beatrice to Edward.
Frederick May, Irish composer and arranger, dies in Dublin on September 8, 1985. His musical career is seriously hindered by a lifelong hearing problem, and he produces relatively few compositions.
May is born on June 9, 1911, into a Dublin Protestant family who lives in the suburb of Donnybrook. His father, also named Frederick, is employed at the Guinness Brewery. He pursues his musical studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he is taught composition by John Larchet. In 1930, McCullough Pigott and Co. publishes his Irish Love Song. That same year he is awarded the Esposito Cup at the Feis Ceoil and as a result of this he is nominated as the first recipient of a new scholarship prize worth £100 to be spent on the further study of piano. In July 1930, he takes his preliminary examination for the Bachelor of Music at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) before departing Dublin to utilise his scholarship in London. In September he enrolls at the Royal College of Music (RCM) where his teachers include Charles Kitson, Ralph Vaughan Williams, R. O. Morris and Gordon Jacob. He takes his final TCD examination in December 1931 submitting a string quartet and on December 10 his degree is conferred. During 1932 his study is funded by the RCM’s Foli Scholarship and in October he is awarded the Octavia Travelling Scholarship.
May’s compositions are few in number and he produces most of his small output in the 1930s and early 1940s. His first significant work is the Scherzo for Orchestra, written while he is still a student in London. The first orchestral run through of Scherzo for Orchestra takes place on March 17, 1933, and it receives its first public performance on December 1 when it is heard as part of the Patron’s Concert. Between the months of May and October he composes his Four Romantic Songs, which receive their premiere in London at a Macnaghten-Lemare concert on January 22, 1934. At some point, probably in the second half of 1933, he follows in the footsteps of other Octavia Scholarship winners and travels to Vienna to study with Egon Wellesz.
On January 1, 1936, May takes up the position of Director of Music at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, a position he retains until he is fired in 1948. His duties mainly consist of leading the piano trio which bears the title “The Abbey Orchestra” in music during the intervals of productions. In 1936, he composes what is today his best-known composition, the String Quartet in C Minor, described in the Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians as “one of the most individual statements from an Irish composer in the first half of the 20th century.” He composes the quartet as his hearing is beginning to deteriorate and he later describes it as “an appeal for release.” String Quartet in C Minor is not premiered until 1948 when it is performed by the Martin Quartet in the Wigmore Hall, London. This is followed by Symphonic Ballad (1937), Suite of Irish Airs (1937), Spring Nocturne (1938), Songs from Prison (1941) and Lyric Movement for Strings (1942). He effectively ceases original composition at this point.
Following a long break from composition, May produces what is to be his valedictory work in 1955, the nine-minute orchestral piece Sunlight and Shadows. It is given its first performance on January 22, 1956, by the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre. Although this is his last original work, he does not abandon music completely. He produces arrangements of Irish music for Radio Éireann, which while not perhaps rewarding artistically, does help to alleviate his always precarious financial situation. He also composes a number of songs for voice and piano and a short piece entitled Idyll for violin and piano. The latter is chosen as a set work for the junior violin competition at the Feis Ceoil in 2017.
Throughout his life May suffers from significant mental health issues which result in hospitalisation. He also experiences otosclerosis, as a result of which he gradually becomes increasingly deaf. In addition, he suffers from severe tinnitus with constant ringing noises in his head. In later life he becomes homeless for a time due to alcoholism and sleeps at night in Grangegorman Asylum, Dublin. He is rescued by some friends led by Garech Browne whose record company, Claddagh Records, records the String Quartet in 1974.
Throughout his career May is an advocate of better musical education in Ireland and expresses his views on this and other musical matters through the medium of The Bell, a monthly journal dealing with the arts. He is a co-founder, along with Brian Boydell and Aloys Fleischmann, of the Music Association of Ireland (now “Friends of Classical Music”), set up in 1948 to promote art music as an integral part of the cultural life of Ireland. Later he becomes a member of Aosdána. He lives the last years of his life at Orthopaedic Hospital of Ireland, Clontarf, Dublin. He dies on September 8, 1985, at the age of 74 and is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery.
Geraldine Dorothy Cummins, spiritualist medium, novelist and playwright, dies in Cork, County Cork, on August 24, 1969. She begins her career as a creative writer, but increasingly concentrates on mediumship and “channelled” writings, mostly about the lives of Jesus and Saint Paul, though she also publishes on a range of other topics. Her novels and plays typically document Irish life in a naturalist manner, often exploring the pathos of everyday life.
Cummins is born in Cork, on January 24, 1890, the daughter of the physician Ashley Cummins, professor of medicine at the National University of Ireland and sister to Mary Hearn and Iris Cummins. In her youth she is an athlete, becoming a member of the Irish Women’s International Hockey Team. She is also active as a suffragette. Her desire to follow her father in a medical career is vetoed by her mother, so she begins a literary career as a journalist and creative writer. From 1913 to 1917 she writes three plays for the Abbey Theatre in collaboration with Suzanne R. Day, the most successful of which is the comedy Fox and Geese (1917). She publishes the novel The Land they Loved in 1919, a naturalistic study of working class Irish life.
As she concentrates on mediumship, Cummins’s literary work tails off. However, she continues to publish creative literature in her later years. Her solo-written play, Till Yesterday Comes Again, is produced by the Chanticleer Theatre, London, in 1938. She also publishes another novel, Fires of Beltane (1936) and a short-story collection Variety Show (1959).
Literary critic Alexander G. Gonzalez says that Cummins work tries to encompass the full range of Irish social life, from the aristocracy to the lower classes. In this respect she is influenced by Somerville and Ross. Gonzalez considers her short story The Tragedy of Eight Pence to be the “finest” of her writings, the tale of a “happily married woman trying to shield her ill husband from the knowledge that his death will leave her penniless.”
Cummins begins to work as a medium following prompting from Hester Dowden and E. B. Gibbes. She receives alleged messages from her spirit-guide “Astor” and is an exponent of automatic writing. Her books are based on these communications. In 1928 she publishes The Scripts of Cleophas, which provides channelled material on early Christian history complementing Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul’s writings, supposed to have been communicated by the spirit of Cleophas, one of Paul’s followers. This is later supplemented by Paul in Athens (1930) and The Great Days of Ephesus (1933).
Cummins’s next work describes human progress through spiritual enlightenment. The Road to Immortality (1932) provides a glowing vision of the afterlife. Its contents are purportedly communicated from the “other side” by the psychologist and psychic researcher Frederic W. H. Myers. Unseen Adventures (1951) is a spiritual autobiography. She also publishes several books of spiritually-derived knowledge about details of the life of Jesus.
During World War II Cummins allegedly works as a British agent, using her personal contacts to identify pro-Nazi factions within the Irish Republican movement. She also employs her psychic activities to support the Allied cause, sending channelled messages from sympathetic spirits to Allied leaders to support the war effort. This includes information from Theodore Roosevelt, Arthur Balfour and Sara Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s mother.
In the 1940s and 50s Cummins works with psychiatrists to develop a model for using spiritualism to treat mental illness, ideas she explores in Perceptive Healing (1945) and Healing the Mind (1957). She collaborates with a psychiatrist who uses the pseudonym R. Connell on both books. Their method is for her to “read” an object associated with the patient and thus identify either childhood traumas or experiences of ancestors which have created the problem. This includes treating a patient who is concerned about his homosexual desires by discovering that this derives from the fact that his Huguenot ancestors were humiliated by Catholics in the 18th century.
Cummins’s biography of writer and spiritualist Edith Somerville is published in 1952. She also writes The Fate of Colonel Fawcett (1955) which offers her psychic insights into the disappearance of the explorer Percy Fawcett in Brazil in 1925. She claims she had received psychic messages from Fawcett in 1936. He was still alive at that time, informing her that he had found relics of Atlantis in the jungle, but was ill. In 1948 she has a message from Fawcett’s spirit reporting his death. Her last book is an account of her conversations with the spirit of Winifred Coombe Tennant, Swan on a Black Sea; a Study in Automatic Writing; the Cummins-Willett Scripts (1965).
The automatic writing and alleged channeled material from Cummins have been examined and have been described by some psychical researchers to be the product of her own subconscious. For example, Harry Price, who studies various mental mediums including Cummins, writes that “there is no question that most of the automatic writing which has been published is the product of the subconscious.” Paranormal researcher Hilary Evans notes that unlike most spiritualists, Cummins does not accept the phenomena at face value and questions the source of the material.
According to the psychical researcher Eric Dingwall information published in Cummins’ scripts allegedly from Winifred Coombe Tennant are discovered to be erroneous. Biographer Rodger Anderson writes that although spiritualists consider Cummins completely honest “some suspected that she occasionally augmented her store of knowledge about deceased persons by normal means if by doing so she could bring comfort to the bereaved.”
Cummins’ book The Fate of Colonel Fawcett (1955), contains her automatist scripts allegedly from the spirit of Colonel Fawcett. Spiritualists claim the scripts are evidence for survival. However, the psychical researcher Simeon Edmunds notes that before his disappearance Fawcett had written articles for The Occult Review. Cummins also contributes articles to the same review and Edmunds suggests it is likely she had read the work of Fawcett. Edmunds concludes the scripts are a case of subliminal memory and unconscious dramatization.
Other researchers such as Mary Rose Barrington have suspected fraud as Cummins had long standing connections with friends and families of the deceased that she claimed to have contacted and could have easily obtained information by natural means. The classical scholar E. R. Dodds writes that Cummins worked as a cataloguer at the National Library of Ireland and could have taken information from various books that would appear in her automatic writings about ancient history. Her writings were heavily influenced by literature and religious texts. Dodds also studies her book Swan on a Black Sea which was supposed to be an account of spirit conversation but writes there is evidence suggestive of fraud as Cummins had received some of the information by natural means.
Mac Aonghusa is the son of Criostóir Mac Aonghusa, a writer and Irish language activist, and Mairéad Ní Lupain, a nurse and native Irish speaker. The eldest of four siblings, he grows up speaking Irish as his first language and allegedly does not learn English until the age of eleven. His parents are left-wing Irish republicans who support Fianna Fáil and associate with the like-minded Máirtín Ó Cadhain and Peadar O’Donnell. His parents split when he is ten years of age. His mother takes his siblings away to Dublin while he and his father remain in Rosmuc, a remote village and part of the Galway Gaeltacht. As a teenager he is educated at Coláiste Iognáid (also known as St. Ignatius College), a bilingual school in Galway.
Upon leaving school, Mac Aonghusa first works as an actor at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, performing in Irish language productions. In 1952, he becomes involved in Radio Éireann, first as an actor but later as a reader of short stories before advancing to becoming a newsreader, presenter and interviewer. As he advances his career, he works for RTÉ, UTV and BBC television from the 1960s. In 1962, he begins presenting An Fear agus An Sceal (The Man & his Story) on RTÉ television, an Irish language show which sees him interviewing a different guest of note about their life each episode. That same year he wins a Jacob’s Award for An Fear agus an Sceal, which he continues to host until 1964.
As well as attracting awards, An Fear agus an Sceal also brings controversy. Two interviews, one with Máirtín Ó Cadhain, one with Con Lehane, both criticise the measures practised by the Fianna Fáil government during World War II to suppress and imprison Irish republicans. In response, the Fianna Fáil government intervenes with RTÉ, and those episodes are not aired. This is not to be Mac Aonghusa’s only run-in with the Fianna Fáil government. After he recorded a programme in which he questioned the effectiveness of Ireland’s civil defence measures in the face of nuclear war, then Minister for DefenceKevin Boland has the episode suppressed. He once again runs afoul of the Fianna Fáil government when, after criticising the party in his anonymous weekly political gossip column in the Sunday Independent, then Minister for AgricultureNeil Blaney sees to it that the column is dropped. He is not deterred and returns anonymously as “Gulliver” in The Sunday Press and a gossip column on the back page of The Hibernia Magazine.
The latter half of Mac Aonghusa’s 1960s/70s broadcasting career is primarily associated with the Irish language current events show Féach, which he both presents and edits. He resigns from Féach in 1972 following a bitter dispute with the broadcaster and commentator Eoghan Harris.
In 1959, Mac Aonghusa writes a series of six articles for The Irish Times in which he vehemently opposes the Fianna Fáil government’s proposal to abolish single transferable vote in Ireland in favour of first-past-the-post voting. He contends that first-past-the-post voting gives too much influence to party bosses, while proportional representation gives even small minorities representation, preventing them from feeling excluded by the state such as nationalists in Northern Ireland. In the referendum held on the matter on June 17, 1959, voters reject first past the vote by a margin of 2%. Fianna Fáil attempts to repeal proportional representation again in the late 60s, at which point Mac Aonghusa once again throws himself into the fight, leading a group called “Citizens for PR.” In the referendum of 1968, voters reject the first past the post system by over 20%. He later recalls that his defence of proportional representation his greatest achievement in politics.
In the 1960s, both Mac Aonghusa and his wife, Catherine, join the Sean Connolly branch of the Labour Party in Dublin. The branch had established a reputation as a haven for intellectuals who want a branch to themselves away from the many other Labour branches dominated by trade unionists. The branch comes to advocate for expressly socialist policies combined with on-the-ground grass-roots campaigning. Through the Sean Connolly Branch, both he and his wife begin to develop significant influence over the leader of the Labour party Brendan Corish.
In the 1965 Irish general election, Mac Aonghusa stands on behalf of the Labour party in the Louth constituency but is not elected. In 1966, he publishes a book of speeches by Corish, the speeches themselves mostly having been ghostwritten by his wife Catherine. The introduction of the book proclaims that Corish had developed a “brand of democratic republican socialism … broadened by experience and built firmly on Irish‐Ireland roots” and had rid the party of “do‐nothing backwoodsmen”, thereby becoming the “first plausible and respected Labour leader in Ireland”. It is at this same time that he is elevated to vice-chairman of the party. As vice-chair, he tries to convince Corish to stand in the 1966 Irish presidential election. When he fails to do so, he supports Fine Gael‘s Tom O’Higgins in his bid for the presidency. O’Higgins comes within 0.5% of beating the incumbent, an ageing Éamon de Valera.
It was around this same time that Mac Aonghusa becomes active in the Wolfe Tone Societies, a republican organisation linked almost directly to Sinn Féin. He suggests that republicans with “progressive views” should join the Labour party. In 1966, alongside Máirtín Ó Cadhain and other Gaeilgeoirí, he counter-protests and disrupts the Language Freedom Movement, an organisation seeking the abolition of compulsory Irish in the education system. For this, he and his allies are criticised as acting illiberally, while he maintains that those who oppose the Irish language are “slaves” unworthy of tolerance.
Mac Aonghusa’s open disdain for the conservative and trade union wings of the Labour, as well as his open embrace of republican sensibilities and tendency to make pronouncements on Labour policy without first consulting the party’s structures, bring him many internal enemies. An attempt is made to censure him for backing breakaway trade unions, but he is able to survive this. In 1966, he encourages the formation of the Young Labour League, an unofficial youth wing of the party led by Brian Og O’Higgins, son of former Sinn Féin president Brian O’Higgins. Mirroring his own position, the Youth League are Corish loyalists that openly rebel against the views of Labour’s conservative deputy leader James Tully. When the youth league begins publishing their own weekly newsletter, Labour’s administrative council condemns it after discovering material which is “violently” critical of Tully and other Labour conservatives. An ensuing investigation into the newsletter leads to Mac Aonghusa admitting that he had financed it and written some of the content, but not the anti-Tully material. After he refuses to co-operate with further investigations into the matter, he is expelled on January 12, 1967 for “activities injurious” to the party. In the aftermath, he portrays himself a left-wing martyr purged by a right-wing “Star chamber,” a tactic that garners him sympathy. Nevertheless, his expulsion is confirmed at the October 1967 party conference, despite one last appeal. His wife leaves the party alongside him.
In the aftermath of his expulsion from Labour, Mac Aonghusa expresses an interest in the social democratic wing of Fine Gael, which had been developing under Declan Costello since the mid-1960s. However, he does not join the party and instead runs as an independent candidate in the 1969 Irish general election in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown. When he is not elected, he begins to refocus on the revival of the Irish language and with nationalist politics rather than being elected himself.
Upon the onset of the Troubles, Mac Aonghusa is initially supportive of Official Sinn Féin, however by 1972 he comes to resent them and, through the Ned Stapleton Cumann, their secret influence over RTÉ. During the Arms Crisis in 1970, he supports Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, who stand accused of arranging to supply weapons to the Provisional IRA, in the pages of the New Statesman and other left‐wing journals. In this time period, he warns editors not to reprint his material in the Republic of Ireland as there is a de facto ban on him, and indeed, official attempts are made to block the transmission of his telexed reports.
Despite his earlier famed stark criticism of Fianna Fáil, Mac Aonghusa’s defence of Haughey leads to a friendship between the two men which results in him becoming one of Haughey’s loudest defenders throughout the rest of his career. His columns in The Sunday Press and Irish language paper Anois are accused of descending into self-parody in their stringent defences of Haughey.
During the 1970s, Mac Aonghusa writes a number of books covering significant figures in Irish republicanism. In order, he releases books on James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, Wolfe Tone and Éamon de Valera. In his work on De Valera, he emphasises what he perceives as the more radical aspects of the Fianna Fáil founder. During 1974 and 1975, he works as a United Nations Special Representative to the Southern Africa region with Seán MacBride, where they involve themselves in the South African Border War, and during which time Mac Aonghusa becomes involved in setting up a radio station in Namibia, linked to the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) nationalist party.
In the 1980s, Haughey twice appoints Mac Aonghusa to the Arts Council as well as naming him president of Bord na Gaeilge (1989-93). This is an issue as Mac Aonghusa is already president of Conradh na Gaeilge. Being head of the main Irish language lobbying body as well as the state body responsible for the Irish language has an obvious conflict of interest. In 1991, following the announcement by Haughey that the government is to fund the creation of an Irish-language television station (launched in 1996 as Teilifís na Gaeilge), an elated Mac Aonghusa suggests that Haughey would be “remembered among the families of the Gael as long as the Gaelic nation shall survive.”
In 1992 there are calls for Mac Aonghusa to step down from Bord na Gaeilge after he pronounces that “every respectable nationalist” in West Belfast should vote for Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams over the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) candidate Joe Hendron in the 1992 United Kingdom general election as he considers a defeat for Adams “a victory for British imperialism.” Nevertheless, he simultaneously advises voters in South Down to vote for the SDLP’s Eddie McGrady over Sinn Féin. He rails against his detractors at the Conradh na Gaeilge ardfheis that year, declaring that “The mind of the slave, of the slíomadóir, of the hireling and the vagabond is still fairly dominant in Ireland.”
As of 1995, Mac Aonghusa continues to label himself a socialist. In the foreword to the book, he writes about James Connolly that is released that year, he declares that “the abolition of capitalism is essential if the great mass of the people in all parts of the globe are to be emancipated.”
However, with the recent collapse of the Soviet Union in mind, Mac Aonghusa declares that the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe have not been socialist and argues that the social democracies of Scandinavia are what James Connolly had envisioned as the desired socialist society. In the same text, he accuses the Irish education system as well as Ireland’s media of obfuscating Connolly’s views on socialism and nationalism.
Mac Aonghusa battles through ill health in his final years but remains able to continue writing a number of books. His last publication, Súil Tharam (2001), comes just two years before his death in Dublin on September 28, 2003.
In 1955, Mac Aonghusa marries Catherine Ellis, a member of the Church of Ireland from Belfast. For her married name, she chooses to use “McGuinness,” the English language equivalent of Mac Aonghusa. Catherine McGuinness goes on to become a Senator and a Judge of the Circuit Court, High Court and Supreme Court over the course of her legal career. Together they have three children together.
seamus dubhghaill 