Robin Flower

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Robin Flower
Born 1881 (1881)
Died 1946 (1947) (aged 65)
Occupation British writer and scholar

Robin Ernest William Flower (1881–1946) was an English poet and scholar, a Celticist, Anglo-Saxonist and translator from the Irish language. He is commonly known in Ireland as "Bláithín" (Little Flower). He married Ida Mary Streeter.

Life

He was born at Meanwood in Yorkshire, and educated at Leeds Grammar School and Pembroke College, Oxford.[1] He worked from 1929 as Deputy Keeper of Manuscripts in the British Museum[2] and, completing the work of Standish Hayes O'Grady, compiled a catalogue of the Irish manuscripts there.

He wrote several collections of poetry, translations of the Irish poets for the Cuala Press, and verses on Blasket Island. He first visited Blasket in 1910, at the recommendation of Carl Marstrander, his teacher at the School of Irish Learning in Dublin;[3][4] he acquired there the Irish nickname Bláithín.[5] He suggested a Norse origin for the name "Blasket".[6] Under Flower's influence, George Derwent Thomson and Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson made scholarly visits to Blasket.[7]

After his death his ashes were scattered on the Blasket Islands.

Works

As a scholar of Anglo-Saxon, he wrote on the Exeter Book[8] He identified interpolations in the Old English Bede, by Laurence Nowell.[9][10][11] His work on Nowell included the discovery in 1934, in Nowell's transcription, of the poem Seasons for Fasting.[12][13]

He translated from the writings of Tomás Ó Criomhthain, his Irish language teacher on the Blasket Islands,[14] and wrote a memoir, The Western Island; Or, the Great Blasket (1944), illustrated by his wife Ida.[15] The essay collection The Irish Tradition (1947) is often cited, and was reprinted in 1994; it includes "Ireland and Medieval Europe", his John Rhŷs Memorial Lecture from 1927.

References

  • Bell, Sir Harold (1948) Robin Ernest William Flower; 1881–1946, in: Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 32 (includes bibliography, pp. 23–27)

Notes

  1. ↑ Poems of Today, third series (1938), p. xxiv
  2. ↑ http://www.answers.com/topic/robin-flower Robin Flower
  3. ↑ Gonzalez, Alexander G. & Nelson, Emmanuel S. (1997) Modern Irish Writers: a bio-critical sourcebook; p. 322
  4. ↑ Ó Giolláin, Diarmuid (2000) Locating Irish Folklore: tradition, modernity, identity; pp. 125-26.
  5. ↑ The Blasket Islands on the Southwest Coast of Ireland: Historical information
  6. ↑ http://www.dingle-peninsula.ie/blaskets.html Blaskets
  7. ↑ McCormack, W. J. & Gillan, Patrick (2001) The Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture, p. 73
  8. ↑ Chambers, R. W., Förster, Max & Flower, Robin, eds. (1933) The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry
  9. ↑ http://www.u.arizona.edu/~ctb/oen/bede.html Bede
  10. ↑ Flower, Robin (1935) "Laurence Nowell and the Discovery of England in Tudor Times", in: Proceedings of the British Academy; 21 (1935), p. 62
  11. ↑ Prescott, Andrew (2004) Robin Flower and Laurence Nowell in Jonathan Wilcox (ed.) Old English Scholarship and Bibliography: essays in honor of Carl T. Berkhout. (Old English Newsletter Subsidia ISSN 0739-8549; 32). [Kalamazoo, Mich.]: Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University; pp. 41-61
  12. ↑ Greenfield, Stanley B. & Calder, Daniel Gillmore (1996) A New Critical History of Old English Literature: with a survey of the Anglo-Latin background by Michael Lapidge; p. 234
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Née Ida Mary Streeter, she was the sister of the biblical scholar Burnett Hillman Streeter, see http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~soperstuff/Surrey/surrey_notes.htm.

External links

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  • Translation of "Pangur Bán", a poem by an 8th (? 9th) century Irish monk about his cat

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