Tag: Maud Gonne

#OTD in 1917 – Fifty-two year old William Butler Yeats finally gets married, but not to Maud Gonne, the love of his life.

20/10/2023.Reading time 4 minutes.

Instead he marries 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees (1892–1968). Although only weeks previously, Yeats had proposed to Maud Gonne’s daughter Iseult MacBride from her marriage to John MacBride, the marriage of Yeats and Hyde-Lees was a happy one producing two children. By 1916, Yeats was 51 years old and determined to marry and produce an heir. His […]

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#OTD in 1894 – Birth of of Iseult Gonne; the daughter of Maud Gonne and Lucien Millevoye, and the wife of the novelist Francis Stuart.

06/08/2023.Reading time 4 minutes.

Iseult Gonne, was the daughter of Maud Gonne and Lucien Millevoye, and the wife of the novelist Francis Stuart. Iseult was born on 6 August 1894, the daughter of Maud and her then married French Boulangist lover Lucien Millevoye. Maud Gonne claimed that Iseult was conceived in the mausoleum of Iseult’s late brother, Georges Silvère […]

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#OTD in 1917 – Muriel MacDonagh, wife of executed 1916 leader Thomas MacDonagh, dies of heart failure while swimming on Skerries south beach.

09/07/2023.Reading time 7 minutes.

Muriel Gifford was born in Rathmines, Dublin, of a Catholic solicitor father and a fiercely Protestant mother, the children were raised Church of Ireland, an unremarkable phenomenon among the wealthy professional classes of the time. Among the three Gifford sisters, Nellie, Muriel and Grace, Muriel married Thomas MacDonagh and Grace married Joseph Plunkett, who were […]

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#OTD in 1897 – James Connolly is arrested and detained overnight for organising a series of protests over Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

22/06/2023.Reading time 2 minutes.

But time at last makes all things even, And if we do but watch the hour, There never yet was human power That could evade, if unforgiven, The patient hate and vigil long, Of those who treasure up a wrong. British capitalism was a dominant world power, still expanding. It policed the world for imperial […]

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The Ark of the Covenant and The Hill of Tara

19/06/2023.Reading time 5 minutes.

During 1899 and 1902, members of the British-Israel Association of London came to Co Meath to dig up the Hill of Tara. These ‘British-Israelites’ believed they would find buried there the Ark of the Covenant, the chest said to contain the Ten Commandments inscribed on stone tablets. Their strange and unlawful activity provoked a protest […]

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#OTD in 1865 – Birth of writer and nationalist, W.B. Yeats, in Dublin.

13/06/2023.Reading time 3 minutes.

William Butler Yeats was the son of painter John Butler Yeats. He spent much of his childhood in Co Sligo which was a huge source of inspiration for him, not least the beautiful ‘Lake Isle of Inisfree’. Yeats was a major player in the Celtic Revival which endeavored (successfully) to raise awareness of the culture […]

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#OTD in 1916 – Easter Rising | Irish patriot, John MacBride, is executed by firing squad in Kilmainham Gaol.

05/05/2023.Reading time 5 minutes.

Born in Westport, Co Mayo, MacBride travelled to America in 1896 to further the aims of the IRB, thereafter travelling to South Africa where he raised the Irish Transvaal Brigade, which became known as MacBride’s Brigade, to fight against the English during the Second Boer War where, as happened far too often in history, Irish […]

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#OTD in 1902 – Premiere of W.B. Yeats’ Cathleen ni Houlihan starring Maud Gonne. The play is about the failed rebellion of 1798, with a woman representing the ideal of an independent Irish republic.

02/04/2023.Reading time 2 minutes.

Cathleen ni Houlihan is a one-act play written by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory in 1902. It was first performed on 2 April of that year and first published in October on Samhain. The play centers on the 1798 Rebellion. The play is startlingly nationalistic, in its last pages encouraging young men to sacrifice their […]

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#OTD in Irish History | 2 April:

02/04/2023.Reading time 17 minutes.

World Autism Awareness Day International Children’s Book Day In the Liturgical calendar, today is the Feast Day of St Brónach, a 6th-century holy woman from Ireland, the reputed founder and patron saint of Cell Brónche (church of Brónach), now Kilbroney, in Co Down. 1807 – Birth of Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, 1st Baronet, KCB, a […]

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#OTD in 1954 – Death of Iseult Lucille Germaine Gonne. She was the daughter of Maud Gonne and Lucien Millevoye, and the wife of the novelist Francis Stuart.

22/03/2023.Reading time 5 minutes.

Iseult was born on 6 August 1894, the daughter of Maud and her then married French Boulangist lover Lucien Millevoye. Maud Gonne claimed that Iseult was conceived in the mausoleum of Iseult’s late brother, Georges Silvère (1890–1891) who died of meningitis, in an attempt by her parents to reincarnate their dead and still adored infant. […]

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