| Máire Ní Chinnéide | |
|---|---|
| Máire Ní Chinéide at her graduation | |
| Camogie Association of Ireland | |
| In office 1905–1909 |
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| Succeeded by | Elizabeth Burke-Plunkett |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 17 January 1879 Rathmines, County Dublin |
| Died | 25 May 1967 (aged 88) Dublin, Ireland |
| Spouse(s) | Sean MacGearailt (1878-1955) |
| Children | Niamh NicGearailt |
| Profession | Irish language activist |
| Religion | Catholic |
Máire Ní Chinnéide (17 January 1879–25 May 1967) was an Irish language activist, playwright, first President of the Camogie Association and first woman president of the Oireachtas.[1]
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.
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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 of Revenue in the Irish civil service, with whom she lived originally in Glasnevin and then in Dalkey.
She was a founder member of the radical Craobh an Chéitinnigh, the Keating branch of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaelige), composed mainly of Dublin-based Kerry people and regarded, by themselves at least, as the intellectual focus of the League.
It was from the efforts of Máire, Tadhg Ó Donnchadha and their 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 off the main road.”[2]
She later served as Vice-President of Craobh an Chéitinnigh, 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.
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 Peig Sayers, put the idea into the old woman's head to write a memoir. According to a later interview with ni Chinneide
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 island as An File ("The Poet"), but Peig “only shook her head doubtfully.” At Christmas a packet arrived from the Blaskets 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-known as a prescribed text on the Leaving Certificate curriculum in Irish.
Maire had an acting part in the first modern play performed in Irish on the stage, Casadh an tSugáin by Douglas Hyde 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.
She died on April 25, 1967 and is buried in Deans Grange Cemetery.
In 2007 the camogie trophy for the annual inter-county All Ireland Championship for counties graded Junior B was named in her honour.
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