An Irishman’s Diary on Anna Johnston, nationalist poet and writer

Anna Johnston, who was born 150 years ago on December 3rd, was a nationalist poet and writer who would probably be best remembered today for her patriotic ballad Roddy McCorley, which was made popular by groups such as the Clancy Brothers and The Dubliners.

She shares her birth year with another nationalist poet and writer, Alice Milligan, and the two women, both from Ulster, co-operated on a number of literary ventures during their lifetimes. They were part of a remarkable generation of Irish women nationalists whose role has received attention only in recent years.

Anna Johnston was born in Ballymena, Co Antrim. Her father, Robert, became a successful contractor and timber merchant, and her mother was Marjorie Magee from Donegal. She had a sister, Margaret and a brother, Seamus, and the family moved to a big house called Glencoe on the Antrim Road in Belfast, under the shade of Cave Hill, which is so closely associated with the history of the 1798 rising.

Robert Johnston was a member of the supreme council of the IRB and was very friendly with the Fenian leaders James Stephens and Charles Kickham.

Magazines

She was only 15 when she had her first piece published and she became a regular contributor of poems and short stories to a number of Irish publications, such as

United Ireland

,

Young Ireland

, the

Nation

and

Catholic Fireside

. She joined the Gaelic League in 1894 and that same year she and Alice Milligan founded a magazine,

The Northern Patriot

, in conjunction with the National Workingmen’s Club of Belfast.

A disagreement between them and the club two years later led to them establishing another magazine, the Shan Van Vocht.

Editor

In later years, Seamus MacManus recalled that the two women not only edited and managed the magazine but wrote most of it as well. “They read the proofs. They kept the books. They sent the bills. They wrote the letters. With their own hands they folded and addressed each copy that was to go out and licked every stamp that was to carry it on its journey to Ireland’s faithful soldiers, veterans and recruits . . . These girls, with their wonderful little magazine, started the so-called Irish revival” (see ainm.ie).

In 1899, when Arthur Griffith and William Rooney established the United Irishman in Dublin, Johnston and Milligan closed the Shan Van Vocht and sent them their list of subscribers.

Both women contributed regularly to the new weekly nationalist publication.

Johnston played a very active role in the Gaelic League. She was a member of the committee of the Greencastle branch and provided a gold medal for presentation at a feis there. She was also chosen for the committee of the Feis Uladh, which was initiated at a meeting in Belfast in July 1900. By then she was a member of the Coiste Gnó or executive committee of the Gaelic League.

She also played a leading role in the centenary commemorations of the 1798 rising, touring the country and giving lectures on the United Irishmen with Alice Milligan and Maud Gonne.

In 1900, she was a founder-member of the nationalist women’s organisation, Inghinidhe na hÉireann, which was led by Gonne; Johnston became one its vice-presidents, along with Jenny Wyse Power.

In spring 1901, she married the teacher, writer and folklorist, Seamus MacManus, from Mountcharles in Donegal, and she moved with him to Revlin in Donegal town.

From this time she used the pseudonym, Ethna Carbery, so that her writings would not be confused with those of her husband, whose surname she had taken.

The name Carbery seems to have been taken from the wife of her great-granduncle; her name was Anne Carbery.

There seems also to have been some link with Felix Carbray (sometimes written “Carbery”), a Canadian member of parliament, originally from Tyrone, who gave her Gaelic League work financial support.

Her marriage and her life’s work were to be cut short when she died in April 1902.

Poems

MacManus collected and published her poems later that year under the title

The Four Winds of Erin

; they proved very popular with the public. Two collections of her stories followed:

The Passionate Hearts

(1903) and

In the Celtic Past

(1904).

Her death devastated MacManus, who could not bring himself to write her biography but he left a series of recollections, in the hope that some future writer might do so. “For her country’s sake, she would gladly sacrifice everything else that she prized – and joyously sacrifice herself,” ran one of those recollections.