Ella Young - Early Life and Work in Ireland

Early Life and Work in Ireland

Born in Fenagh, County Antrim, she grew up in Dublin in a Protestant family and attended the Royal University. She later received her master's degree at Trinity College, Dublin. Her interest in Theosophy led her to become an early member of the Hermetic Society, the Dublin branch of the Theosophical Society, where she met writer Kenneth Morris. Her acquaintance with "Æ" (George William Russell) resulted in becoming one of his select group of protégés, known as the "singing birds". Russell had been her near neighbour, growing up on Grosvenor Square. Young's nationalist sentiments and her friendship with Patrick Pearse, gave her a supporting role in the Easter Rising; as a member of Cumann na mBan, she smuggled rifles and other supplies in support of Republican forces. Young's first volume of verse, titled simply Poems, was published in 1906, and her first work of Irish folklore, The Coming of Lugh, was published in 1909. She became friends with William Butler Yeats' erstwhile flame Maud Gonne, and Gonne illustrated Young's first book of stories, Celtic Wonder Tales (1910). Although Young continued to write poetry, it was for her redactions of traditional Irish legends that she became best known.