This distinguished Irishman is to be accounted only an adopted American. He emigrated to the States in 1842, edited The Boston Pilot, and in 1857 went to Montreal and entered the Canadian Parliament. It was when returning from a night-session that he was assassinated in Ottawa by Fenian malcontents.
MARY C. G. GILLINGTON (MRS BYRON) AND ALICE E. GILLINGTON.
[PAGES 368-373]
These two sisters, whose names have become so deservedly well-known by their contributions to British and American periodicals, are of Celtic blood, though born and resident in England. They are included here as representative of the Anglo Celtic strain so potent in England itself. The elder, Mrs Byron, was born in Cheshire in 1861. Their joint volume, Poems, was published in 1892. Mr Elkin Mathews has just published a volume entitled, A Little Book of Lyrics, by Mrs Byron.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Apropos, let me quote a word or two from Dr Douglas Hyde: “We all remember the inimitable felicity with which that great English-speaking Gael, Sir Walter Scott, has caught,” &c. (with this note) “Both the Buccleugh Scots, and the other four branches of the name, were originally Gaelic-speaking Celts.”
[2] “Failte do Mharcus Latharna ’s do ’Mhnaoi oig Rioghail.”
[3] Published by Mr Fisher Unwin at a shilling. The reader will have to discount Mr Brooke’s over-emphasis on the word Irish, which he frequently uses instead of Celtic, even when alluding to Scoto-Celtic literature and influence.
[4] “On the first day of the Trogan-month, we, to the number of Fianna’s three battalions, practised to repair to Arran, and there to have our fill of hunting until such time as from the tree-tops the cuckoo would call in Ireland. More melodious than all birds whatsoever, it was to give ear to the voices of the birds as they rose from the billows, and from the island’s coast line; thrice fifty separate flocks there are that encircled her, and they clad in all brilliance of all colours; as blue, and green, and azure, and yellow.”
[5] Readers should obtain Dr Hyde’s “Three Sorrows of Story-Telling” (1/-), wherein the beautiful old tale of Deirdrê is re-told by one who is at once a poet and a scholar.
[6] Whence comes the “Prologue to Gaul,” given at p. 187 of this book.