Máire Ní Chinnéide

Máire Ní Chinnéide
1st President of Camogie Association
In office 1905–1909
Succeeded by	Elizabeth Burke-Plunkett
Personal details
Spouse	Sean MacGearailt (1893-1955)
Children	Nuala MacGearailt
Profession	Irish language activist

Máire Ní Chinnéide , Irish language activist, playwright, and first President of the Camogie Association, and first woman president of the Oireachtas,

==Background— She was born in Rathmines in 1879 and attended Muckross Park College and Royal University (later the NUI) where she was a classmate of Agnes O’Farrelly, Helena Concannon, and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington.

Irish Language

She learned Irish on holiday in Ballyvourney and earned the first scholarship in Irish from the Royal University, worth £100 a year, which was spent on visits to the Irish college in Ballingeary.

She studied in the school of Old Irish established by professor Osborn Bergin and was strongly influenced by the Irish-Australian professor O’Daly. She later taught latin through Irish at Ballingeary and became proficient in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

She spent the last £100 of her scholarship on a dowry for her marriage to Sean MacGearailt, later first accountant general for revenue in the Irish civil service, with whom she lived originally in Glasnevin and then in Dalkey.

She was a founder member of Craobh an Chéitinnigh, Keating branch of the Gaelic League comprised mainly of Dublin-based Kerry people and regarded, by themselves at least, as the intellectual focus of the League.

Camogie

It was from the efforts of Máire and her colleagues in Craobh an Chéitinnigh that the new woman’s stick and ball field game of Camoguidheacht emerged in 1904.

She was on the first camogie team to play an exhibition match in Navan in July 1904, became an early propagandist for the game and, in 1905 was elected president of the infant camogie association. She wrote:

“all existing games were passed in review, but it was felt from the first that Hurling was the model on which the new game should be formed.” Initial matches were played on the grounds of Mr O’Dowd in Drumcondra Park, but “the place was not very suitable and players did not join in any numbers until the Keating Camoguidhthe betook themselves to the Phoenix Park, where they have a convenient ground well of the main road.”

Gaelic League

She later served as Vice-President of Craobh an Chéitinnigh of Conradh na Gaelige or the Gaelic League, to Cathal Brugha. She was active in Cumann na mBan during the Irish War of Independence and took the pro-treaty side during the civil war and attempted to set up a woman’s organisation “in support of the free state” alongside Jenny Wyse-Power.

Peig Sayers

She first visited the Blasket Islands in 1932 with her daughter Niamh, who was to die tragically young. In the summer of 1934 Maire, Bean Nic Gearailt as she was then, who had known Pieg Sayers, put the idea into the old woman;s head to write a memoir. According to a later interview with ni Chinneide

“she knew and admired her gift for easy conversation, her cgracious charm as a hostess, her talent for ilustratiunbg a point she was making by a story out of her own experience that as rich in philosophy and thought as it was limited geographically.” .

Peig answered that she had “nothing to write.” She had learned only to read and write in English at school and most of it was forgotten.

Máire Ní Chinnéide suggested Peig should dictate her memoir to her son Micheal, known to everyone on the sialnd as the file, but Peig “only shook her head doubtfully.” At Christmas a packet arrived form the Balskets with a manuscript, Maire transcribed it word for word and in summer brought it back to the Blaskets to read it to Peig.

She then edited the manuscript for the Talbot Press. Peig became well-knwn as a prescribed text on the irish Leaving Cert curriculum.

Writing

Maire had an acting part in the first modern play performred in Irish on the stage, Casadh an tSugáin by Douglas de hIde in 1901. She was later author of children’s plays staged by An Comhar Drauidhahcthta at the Oireachtas and the Peacock Theatre, of which Gleann na Sidheóg (1904) and An Dúthchas (1908) were published, broadcaster in Irish on 2RN/Raidio Eireann after its foundation in 1926 and author of a translation of Grimms’ Fairy Tales (1923). She was president of the Gaelic Players Dramatic group during the 1930s and a founder of the Gaelic Writers Association in 1939.

Personal Life

She died in her Dalkey home on April 25 1967 at is buried in Deans Grange Cemetery.

Publications

• Gleann na sidheóg le Máire Ní Chinnéide. (Baile Átha Cliath : Muintir na Leabhar Gaedhilge, 1905).
• An dúthchas: dráma éin-ghníomha / Máire Ní Chinnéide do sgríobh. (Baile Átha Cliath: Connradh na Gaedhilge, 1908).
• Scéalta ó Ghrimm le Máire Ní Chinnéide d'aistrigh by Grimm, Jacob, 1785-1863 (Baile Átha Cliath: Conradh na Gaedhilge, 1923).
• Peig i a scéal féin do scríobh Peig Sayers; Máire Ní Chinnéide do chuir i n-eagar (Baile Átha Cliath Clólucht an Talbóidigh 1936, and subsequent editions)

External links

• Camogie.ie Official Camogie Association Website
• On The Ball Official Camogie Magazine Issue 1 and issue 2
• History of Camogie slideshow. presented by Cumann Camógaíochta Communications Committee at GAA Museum January 25 2010 part one, part two, part three and part four
• Camogie on official GAA website
• Timeline: History of Camogie
• Camogie on GAA Oral History Project
• County and provincial websites: Antrim Armagh Clare Connacht Cork Derry Down Dublin Galway Kerry Kildare Kilkenny Leinster Limerick London Louth Meath Munster North America Offaly Tipperary Ulster Waterford Wexford Wicklow