Ella Young
Photo portrait, 1930
Photo portrait, 1930
Born(1867-12-26)26 December 1867
Fenagh, County Antrim, Ireland
Died23 July 1956(1956-07-23) (aged 88)
Oceano, California, U.S.
Occupation
  • Poet
  • folklorist
  • teacher
NationalityIrish American
Alma materRoyal University of Ireland
Trinity College Dublin
PeriodModernist
SubjectCeltic mythology
Literary movementIrish Literary Revival
Notable works
Celtic Wonder-Tales
  • The Wonder-Smith and His Son
  • The Tangle-Coated Horse

Ella Young (26 December 1867 – 23 July 1956) was an Irish poet and Celtic mythologist active in the Gaelic and Celtic Revival literary movement of the late 19th and early 20th century.[1] Born in Ireland, Young was an author of poetry and children's books. She emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1925 as a temporary visitor and lived in California. For five years she gave speaking tours on Celtic mythology at American universities, and in 1931 she was involved in a publicized immigration controversy when she attempted to become a citizen.

Young held a chair in Irish Myth and Lore at the University of California, Berkeley for seven years. At Berkeley she was known for her colorful and lively persona, giving lectures while wearing the purple robes of a Druid, expounding on legendary creatures such as fairies and elves, and praising the benefits of talking to trees. Her encyclopedic knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject of Celtic mythology attracted and influenced many of her friends and won her a wide audience among writers and artists in California, including poets Robinson Jeffers and Elsa Gidlow, philosopher Alan Watts, photographer Ansel Adams, and composer Harry Partch, who set several of her poems to music.[2]

Later in life she served as the "godmother" and inspiration for the Dunites,[3] a group of artists living in the dunes of San Luis Obispo County. She retired to the town of Oceano, where she died at the age of 88.

Early life and work in Ireland

Born in Fenagh, Cullybackey,[4] County Antrim, she grew up in Dublin in a Protestant family and attended the Royal University. Contrary to some sources, she is not related to the scholar Rose Maud Young. She later received her master's degree at Trinity College, Dublin.[5] 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.[6] 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,[7] she smuggled rifles and other supplies in support of Republican forces.[8] 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. Her close friend, Irish revolutionary and actor, Maud Gonne illustrated both Lugh and Young's first story collection, Celtic Wonder-Tales (1910). Although she continued to write poetry, she became known best for her telling of traditional Irish legends. She also had a series of fairy experiences, which she recounted in the press.[9]

Emigration to the United States

Young first came to the United States in the 1920s to visit friends, traveling to Connecticut to meet Mary Colum (Molly) and her husband, Irish poet Padraic Colum.[10] Celtic studies scholar William Whittingham Lyman Jr. left the University of California, Berkeley, in 1922 and Young was hired to fill the post in 1924.[11] She immigrated to the United States in 1925; according to Kevin Starr[12] she "had been briefly detained at Ellis Island as a probable mental case when the authorities learned that she believed in the existence of fairies, elves, and pixies."[13] At the time, people suspected to have a mental illness were denied admission to the U.S.

While based in California, Young began speaking at various universities in 1925, lecturing first at Columbia University[14] and then at Smith College, Vassar College, and Mills College.[15] According to Norm Hammond,

Wherever she went, she was received enthusiastically, especially by the young people of America. They loved this white-haired lady with the eyes of a seer that appeared to be lighted from within. She spoke with a melodious voice; when she spoke everyone listened. She had a thin, wispy quality that made her appear as the apparition of the very spirits she described. Indeed, her skin had an almost translucent quality.[16]

Young lived in Sausalito in the mid-1920s.[17] She was the James D. Phelan Lecturer in Irish Myth and Lore at the University of California, Berkeley for approximately a decade.[18]

As of 1931 she had not received legal immigration status; Charles Erskine Scott Wood advised her to go to Victoria, British Columbia, in order to restart the process toward American citizenship. Her application for re-entry to the U.S. was declined for months on the grounds that she might become a "public charge".[19]

In 1926 Ella Young lectured at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. She was hosted for a fortnight by the famous artist John O’Shea and socialized with the poet Robinson Jeffers and with the “radical Socialists” Sinclair Lewis, Ella Winter, Upton Sinclair and Lincoln Steffens. Two years later in The Carmelite she published her somber poem memorializing the suicide of local artist Ira Remsen. In 1934 Young penned an enigmatic review of O’Shea’s exhibition of charcoals at San Francisco’s prestigious Palace of the Legion of Honor (museum). O’Shea’s celebrated portrait of Young was exhibited in 1940 and 1945 at the Carmel Art Association.[20] Young believed that Point Lobos near Carmel was the psychic center of the Pacific Coast and "when the force of Lobos is released, a great thing will happen in America-- but Lobos is not ready to make friends yet."[21]

Later life

In 1928 Young's book The Wonder-Smith and His Son, illustrated by Boris Artzybasheff, became a Newbery Honor Book (runner-up). During the 1920s she occasionally visited Halcyon, California, a Theosophical colony near San Luis Obispo. While living in a cabin behind John Varian's house there, Young finished writing The Tangle-Coated Horse and Other Tales, a 1930 Newbery Honor Book.[22] In Halcyon her eclectic circle of friends included Ansel Adams, whom she had first met in 1928 or 1929, in San Francisco through their mutual friend Albert M. Bender.[23] She traveled with Adams and his wife Virginia to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1929, spending time with friends, visiting artists at the Taos art colony, and staying with Mabel Dodge Luhan.[24] In Taos, Young also visited with Georgia O'Keeffe.[25] A photograph of Young and Virginia Adams appears in Ansel Adams's autobiography. Adams recalls that Young and fellow writer Mary Hunter Austin did not get along very well together but that conservationist Dorothy Erskine was one of Young's good friends.[23]

In 1932 The Unicorn with Silver Shoes was released, illustrated by Robert Lawson.[26] Young published her autobiography, Flowering Dusk: Things Remembered Accurately and Inaccurately in 1945. Later, she found particular affinity in the California Redwoods After battling cancer, Young was found dead in her Oceano home on 23 July 1956. She was cremated, and in October her ashes were scattered in a redwood grove.[27] A grave marker is located in the Santa Maria Cemetery District, Santa Maria, California. Young left the bulk of her estate to the Save the Redwoods League.[28]

Legacy

Writers John Matthews and Denise Sallee released an annotated anthology of Young's work in 2012, At the Gates of Dawn: A Collection of Writings by Ella Young. Writer Rose Murphy released a biography of Young in 2008.[29] The South County Historical Society of San Luis Obispo County, California, is active in the research and preservation of the history of the Dunites and Ella Young.[30] An archive of her papers is currently held by the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections at the University of California, Los Angeles.[31]

Selected publications

Poetry

Fiction

According to John Clute, the so-called tales are "based on Irish material" whereas The Unicorn is "an original tale, though resembling both [Kenneth] Morris and James Stephens in its telling of the trip of an Irish hero to the Afterlife".[35] One library catalogue summary of the 1988 selection, perhaps by its publisher Floris Books, implies that "Young's classic re-telling of Celtic stories" comprises all four earlier collections.[34] According to Ruth Berman, The Unicorn is "her original fantasy".[26] As of 1999 it was long out-of-print but Celtic Wonder Tales, The Wonder-Smith and His Son, and The Tangle-Coated Horse were republished in 1991 by Floris Books and Anthroposophic Press.[26]

Nonfiction

Flowering Dusk will be republished with permission of the Ella Young Literary Estate in 2024 in a limited edition of 300 by Holythorn Press.[36]

See also

References

  1. ^ Heckel, N. M. (1995). "Ella Young". The Camelot Project. University of Rochester, Robbins Library.
  2. ^ Gilmore, Bob (1998). Harry Partch: A Biography. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-06521-3.
  3. ^ Hammond 1992, pp. 37–38.
  4. ^ "Ella Young". Cullybackey and District Historical Society. Archived from the original on 24 July 2019. Retrieved 24 July 2019.
  5. ^ However, in The Maunsel Poets (2004), David Gardiner says Young attended Trinity College, Dublin, not the Royal University of Ireland. In an interview hosted by Dunes Collaborative, Gavin Arthur says Young received her master's degree at Trinity College. See Arthur, Gavin. "Arthur Talks About Ella Young Archived 16 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine". Part 5. Dunes Collaborative. Date unknown.
  6. ^ Dublin City Libraries Archived 14 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine, short biography.
  7. ^ Young was a member of Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) before it merged with Cumann na mBan in 1914. See Bradley and Valiulis, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland (1997).
  8. ^ Starr 2009, pp. 324–26.
  9. ^ Alice Lawton, ‘Fairy Folk Talk and Sing to Her, Says Irish Poetess’, The Boston [MA] Herald (31 Jan 1926), 7
  10. ^ Hammond 2002, pp. 15–16.
  11. ^ LaVarge-Baptista, Elizabeth (21 October 2005). "Celtic Language Study at Berkeley". Celtic Studies Program, University of California, Berkeley. Archived from the original on 17 July 2011.
  12. ^ Starr was State Librarian of California and history professor at the University of Southern California
  13. ^ Starr 2009, pp. 54–55.
  14. ^ Walsh 2009, p. 75.
  15. ^ "Admit Ella Young, Barred Irish Poet". The New York Times. 14 April 1931. p. 16.
  16. ^ Hammond 1992, p. 29.
  17. ^ Lyman 1973, p. 65.
  18. ^ Walsh 2009 says she held the position for seven years, but the Celtic Studies Program Archived 17 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine at UCB says it was ten years.
  19. ^ Letter to the editor from C.E.S. Wood, The Saturday Review of Literature, 14 March 1931, p. 668.
  20. ^ Edwards, Robert W. (2012). Jennie V. Cannon: The Untold History of the Carmel and Berkeley Art Colonies, Vol. 1. Oakland, Calif.: East Bay Heritage Project. pp. 554, 557, 559, 561–562, 588. ISBN 9781467545679. An online facsimile of the entire text of Vol. 1 is posted on the Traditional Fine Arts Organization website.
  21. ^ Starr, Kevin (1997). The dream endures: California enters the 1940s. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 54, 55. ISBN 0195100794. OCLC 34546312.
  22. ^ Hammond 2002, p. 16. See Association for Library Service to Children (2009). The Newbery and Caldecott Awards: A Guide to the Medal Honor Books. ALA Editions. ISBN 978-0-8389-3585-9.
  23. ^ a b Adams, Ansel. "Ansel Adams Talks About Ella Young". Part 1. Dunes Collaborative. Archived from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
  24. ^ Lyman, W. W. "W.W. Lyman Talks About Ella Young". Part 2. Dunes Collaborative. Archived from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 26 October 2010.
  25. ^ Hammond 2002, pp. 14–16; Adams, Ansel. "Ansel Adams Talks About Ella Young". Part I. Dunes Collaborative. Date unknown.
  26. ^ a b c Berman, Ruth (August 1999). "The Unicorn with Silver Shoes". The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Mercury Publications: 162.
  27. ^ The funeral ceremony is described by W. W. Lyman in Part 2 of "W.W. Lyman Talks About Ella Young Archived 25 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine", Dunes Collaborative.
  28. ^ Last Will and Testament of Ella Young, registry # 8660, County Clerk's Office, County of San Luis Obispo [1956]
  29. ^ Walsh 2009, p. 75.
    See also: "Ella Young, Irish mystic and rebel; from literary Dublin to the American West" Reference & Research Book News (2008); Lowery, Robert. "Irish-(North) America". Irish Literary Supplement 28.2 (2009): 28.
  30. ^ Staff (4 August 2009). "Historical Society examines Halcyon and the Dunites". The Times Press Recorder. See for example: "Dunite-Halcyon Exhibits – Fall Season, August 1 – October 3, 2009" (PDF). The South County Historical Society.
  31. ^ "Ella Young Papers, 1900–1956". California Digital Library.
  32. ^ Poems (1906) at Google Books.
  33. ^ Celtic Wonder-Tales (1910) at Sacred-Texts.com.
  34. ^ a b "Celtic wonder tales and other stories" (as Floris Books, 1988). WorldCat. Retrieved 5 March 2018.
  35. ^ "Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997): Young, Ella". SFE: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (sf-encyclopedia.uk). Retrieved 5 March 2018.
    Online reprint of Young's entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction by "JC": John Clute, co-editor of both encyclopedias.
  36. ^ https://www.holythornpress.com/
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