Máire Ní Chinnéide
Encyclopedia
Máire Ní Chinnéide was an Irish language activist, playwright, first President of the Camogie Association
and first woman president of the Oireachtas
.
She was born in Rathmines
in 1879 and attended Muckross Park College
and Royal University
(later the NUI
) where she was a classmate of Agnes O’Farrelly, Helena Concannon
, and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington
.
and earned the first scholarship in Irish from the Royal University
, worth £100 a year, which was spent on visits to the Irish college in Ballingeary
.
She studied in the school of Old Irish established by professor Osborn Bergin
and was strongly influenced by the Irish-Australian professor O’Daly. She later taught Latin through Irish at Ballingeary and became proficient in French, German, Italian and Spanish.
She spent the last £100 of her scholarship on a dowry for her marriage to Sean MacGearailt, later first Accountant General of Revenue in the Irish civil service, with whom she lived originally in Glasnevin
and then in Dalkey
.
She was a founder member of the radical Craobh an Chéitinnigh, the Keating branch of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaelige), composed mainly of Dublin-based Kerry people and regarded, by themselves at least, as the intellectual focus of the League.
and their colleagues in Craobh an Chéitinnigh that the new woman’s stick and ball field game of Camoguidheacht
emerged in 1904.
She was on the first camogie team to play an exhibition match in Navan in July 1904, became an early propagandist for the game and, in 1905 was elected president of the infant Camogie Association. She wrote:
“all existing games were passed in review, but it was felt from the first that Hurling was the model on which the new game should be formed.” Initial matches were played on the grounds of Mr O’Dowd in Drumcondra Park, but “the place was not very suitable and players did not join in any numbers until the Keating Camoguidhthe betook themselves to the Phoenix Park
, where they have a convenient ground well off the main road.”
. She was active in Cumann na mBan during the Irish War of Independence
and took the pro-treaty side during the civil war
and attempted to set up a woman’s organisation “in support of the Free State” alongside Jenny Wyse-Power.
in 1932 with her daughter Niamh, who was to die tragically young. In the summer of 1934 Maire, Bean Nic Gearailt as she was then, who had known Peig Sayers
, put the idea into the old woman's head to write a memoir. According to a later interview with ni Chinneide
Peig answered that she had “nothing to write.” She had learned only to read and write in English at school and most of it was forgotten.
Máire Ní Chinnéide suggested Peig should dictate her memoir to her son Micheal, known to everyone on the island as An File ("The Poet"), but Peig “only shook her head doubtfully.” At Christmas a packet arrived from the Blaskets with a manuscript, Maire transcribed it word for word and in summer brought it back to the Blaskets to read it to Peig.
She then edited the manuscript for the Talbot Press. Peig became well-known as a prescribed text on the Leaving Certificate
curriculum in Irish
.
in 1901. She was later author of children’s plays staged by An Comhar Drauidhahcthta at the Oireachtas and the Peacock Theatre, of which Gleann na Sidheóg (1904) and An Dúthchas (1908) were published, broadcaster in Irish on 2RN/Raidio Eireann after its foundation in 1926 and author of a translation of Grimms' Fairy Tales (1923). She was president of the Gaelic Players Dramatic group during the 1930s and a founder of the Gaelic Writers Association in 1939.
trophy for the annual inter-county All Ireland Championship for counties graded Junior B was named in her honour.
Camogie Association
The Camogie Association organises and promotes the sport of camogie in Ireland and across the world. The Association has close ties with the Gaelic Athletic Association.-History:...
and first woman president of the Oireachtas
Oireachtas na Gaeilge
Oireachtas na Gaeilge is an annually held arts festival of Irish culture, which has run since the 1890s. Based on the Welsh Eisteddfod, Oireachtas na Gaeilge runs for one week, featuring performances, demonstrations and competitions...
.
She was born in Rathmines
Rathmines
Rathmines is a suburb on the southside of Dublin, about 3 kilometres south of the city centre. It effectively begins at the south side of the Grand Canal and stretches along the Rathmines Road as far as Rathgar to the south, Ranelagh to the east and Harold's Cross to the west.Rathmines has...
in 1879 and attended Muckross Park College
Muckross Park College
Muckross Park College is a private Catholic all girls secondary school located in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, Ireland. Founded in 1901, the curriculum is traditional, with a broad general programme of subjects and a compulsory Transition year programme. Muckross is one of a number of Dominican schools in...
and Royal University
Royal University of Ireland
The Royal University of Ireland was founded in accordance with the University Education Act 1879 as an examining and degree-awarding university based on the model of the University of London. A Royal Charter was issued on April 27, 1880 and examinations were opened to candidates irrespective of...
(later the NUI
National University of Ireland
The National University of Ireland , , is a federal university system of constituent universities, previously called constituent colleges, and recognised colleges set up under the Irish Universities Act, 1908, and significantly amended by the Universities Act, 1997.The constituent universities are...
) where she was a classmate of Agnes O’Farrelly, Helena Concannon
Helena Concannon
Helena Concannon was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician, historian, author and language scholar.She was Professor of History at University College Galway...
, and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington
Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington
Johanna Mary Sheehy-Skeffington, was a suffragette and Irish nationalist. Along with her husband and Margaret Cousins and James Cousins she founded the Irish Women's Franchise League in 1908 with the aim of obtaining women's voting rights...
.
Irish Language
She learned Irish on holiday in BallyvourneyBallyvourney
Baile Bhuirne , anglicised as Ballyvourney is a Gaeltacht village in south-west County Cork, Ireland. It is a civil parish in the barony of Muskerry West and is also one half of the Ecclesiastical parish of Baile Bhuirne agus Cúil Aodha in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cloyne-Location and...
and earned the first scholarship in Irish from the Royal University
Royal University of Ireland
The Royal University of Ireland was founded in accordance with the University Education Act 1879 as an examining and degree-awarding university based on the model of the University of London. A Royal Charter was issued on April 27, 1880 and examinations were opened to candidates irrespective of...
, worth £100 a year, which was spent on visits to the Irish college in Ballingeary
Ballingeary
Béal Átha an Ghaorthaidh is a village in the Shehy Mountains in County Cork, Ireland.The village is within the Gaeltacht and has an active Irish-language summer school, Coláiste na Mumhan...
.
She studied in the school of Old Irish established by professor Osborn Bergin
Osborn Bergin
Osborn Joseph Bergin was a scholar of the Irish language and Early Irish literature. He was born in Cork and was educated at Queen's College Cork , then went to Germany for advanced studies in Celtic languages, working with Heinrich Zimmer at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin...
and was strongly influenced by the Irish-Australian professor O’Daly. She later taught Latin through Irish at Ballingeary and became proficient in French, German, Italian and Spanish.
She spent the last £100 of her scholarship on a dowry for her marriage to Sean MacGearailt, later first Accountant General of Revenue in the Irish civil service, with whom she lived originally in Glasnevin
Glasnevin
Glasnevin is a largely residential neighbourhood of Dublin, Ireland.-Geography:A mainly residential neighbourhood, it is located on the Northside of the city of Dublin . It was originally established on the northern bank of the River Tolka...
and then in Dalkey
Dalkey
Dalkey is suburb of Dublin and seaside resort in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County, Ireland. It was founded as a Viking settlement and became an important port during the Middle Ages. According to John Clyn, it was one of the ports through which the plague entered Ireland in the mid-14th century...
.
She was a founder member of the radical Craobh an Chéitinnigh, the Keating branch of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaelige), composed mainly of Dublin-based Kerry people and regarded, by themselves at least, as the intellectual focus of the League.
Camogie
It was from the efforts of Máire, Tadhg Ó DonnchadhaTadhg Ó Donnchadha
Tadhg Ó Donnchadha was an Irish writer, poet, editor, translator and a prominent member of the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association....
and their colleagues in Craobh an Chéitinnigh that the new woman’s stick and ball field game of Camoguidheacht
Camogie
Camogie is an Irish stick-and-ball team sport played by women; it is almost identical to the game of hurling played by men. Camogie is played by 100,000 women in Ireland and world wide, largely among Irish communities....
emerged in 1904.
She was on the first camogie team to play an exhibition match in Navan in July 1904, became an early propagandist for the game and, in 1905 was elected president of the infant Camogie Association. She wrote:
“all existing games were passed in review, but it was felt from the first that Hurling was the model on which the new game should be formed.” Initial matches were played on the grounds of Mr O’Dowd in Drumcondra Park, but “the place was not very suitable and players did not join in any numbers until the Keating Camoguidhthe betook themselves to the Phoenix Park
Phoenix Park
Phoenix Park is an urban park in Dublin, Ireland, lying 2–4 km west of the city centre, north of the River Liffey. Its 16 km perimeter wall encloses , one of the largest walled city parks in Europe. It includes large areas of grassland and tree-lined avenues, and since the seventeenth...
, where they have a convenient ground well off the main road.”
Gaelic League
She later served as Vice-President of Craobh an Chéitinnigh, to Cathal BrughaCathal Brugha
Cathal Brugha was an Irish revolutionary and politician, active in the Easter Rising, Irish War of Independence, and the Irish Civil War and was the first Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann.-Background:...
. She was active in Cumann na mBan during the Irish War of Independence
Irish War of Independence
The Irish War of Independence , Anglo-Irish War, Black and Tan War, or Tan War was a guerrilla war mounted by the Irish Republican Army against the British government and its forces in Ireland. It began in January 1919, following the Irish Republic's declaration of independence. Both sides agreed...
and took the pro-treaty side during the civil war
Irish Civil War
The Irish Civil War was a conflict that accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State as an entity independent from the United Kingdom within the British Empire....
and attempted to set up a woman’s organisation “in support of the Free State” alongside Jenny Wyse-Power.
Peig Sayers
She first visited the Blasket IslandsBlasket Islands
The Blasket Islands are a group of islands off the west coast of Ireland, forming part of County Kerry. They were inhabited until 1953 by a completely Irish-speaking population. The inhabitants were evacuated to the mainland on 17 November 1953...
in 1932 with her daughter Niamh, who was to die tragically young. In the summer of 1934 Maire, Bean Nic Gearailt as she was then, who had known Peig Sayers
Peig Sayers
Peig Sayers was an Irish author and seanachaí born in Dunquin , County Kerry, Ireland. Seán Ó Súilleabháin, the former archivist for the Irish Folklore Commission, described her as "one of the greatest woman storytellers of recent times".-Biography:She spent much of her early life as a domestic...
, put the idea into the old woman's head to write a memoir. According to a later interview with ni Chinneide
- “she knew and admired her gift for easy conversation, her gracious charm as a hostess, her talent for illustrating a point she was making by a story out of her own experience that as rich in philosophy and thought as it was limited geographically.”.
Peig answered that she had “nothing to write.” She had learned only to read and write in English at school and most of it was forgotten.
Máire Ní Chinnéide suggested Peig should dictate her memoir to her son Micheal, known to everyone on the island as An File ("The Poet"), but Peig “only shook her head doubtfully.” At Christmas a packet arrived from the Blaskets with a manuscript, Maire transcribed it word for word and in summer brought it back to the Blaskets to read it to Peig.
She then edited the manuscript for the Talbot Press. Peig became well-known as a prescribed text on the Leaving Certificate
Leaving Certificate
The Leaving Certificate Examinations , commonly referred to as the Leaving Cert is the final examination in the Irish secondary school system. It takes a minimum of two years preparation, but an optional Transition Year means that for those students it takes place three years after the Junior...
curriculum in Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
.
Writing
Maire had an acting part in the first modern play performed in Irish on the stage, Casadh an tSugáin by Douglas HydeDouglas Hyde
Douglas Hyde , known as An Craoibhín Aoibhinn , was an Irish scholar of the Irish language who served as the first President of Ireland from 1938 to 1945...
in 1901. She was later author of children’s plays staged by An Comhar Drauidhahcthta at the Oireachtas and the Peacock Theatre, of which Gleann na Sidheóg (1904) and An Dúthchas (1908) were published, broadcaster in Irish on 2RN/Raidio Eireann after its foundation in 1926 and author of a translation of Grimms' Fairy Tales (1923). She was president of the Gaelic Players Dramatic group during the 1930s and a founder of the Gaelic Writers Association in 1939.
Trophy
In 2007 the camogieCamogie
Camogie is an Irish stick-and-ball team sport played by women; it is almost identical to the game of hurling played by men. Camogie is played by 100,000 women in Ireland and world wide, largely among Irish communities....
trophy for the annual inter-county All Ireland Championship for counties graded Junior B was named in her honour.
Publications
- Gleann na Sidheóg. (Dublin : Muintir na Leabhar Gaedhilge, 1905).
- An Dúthchas: dráma éin-ghníomha. (Dublin: Connradh na Gaedhilge, 1908).
- Scéalta ó Ghrimm (Jacob Grimm 1785-1863) (Translation, Dublin: Conradh na Gaedhilge, 1923).
- Peig i a scéal féin do scríobh Peig Sayers; (Edited, Dublin, Talbot Press 1936, and subsequent editions)
External links
- Camogie.ie Official Camogie Association Website
- History of Camogie slideshow. presented by Cumann Camógaíochta Communications Committee at GAA Museum January 25, 2010 part one, part two, part three and part four
- Timeline: History of Camogie
- Camogie on GAA Oral History Project