Ella Young
Ella Young was an Irish poet, republican and Celtic mythologist. Born in 1867 in Fenagh, Co. Antrim. She was active in the Gaelic and Celtic Revival literary movement of the late 19th and early 20th century.
She commenced her third level studies in 1893, this lover of all things magical chose economics and law, but as her friend and mentor George Russell (AE) noted no one would have suspected it. She graduated in history, jurisprudence and political economy from the Dublin Royal University in 1898. It was an exciting and dangerous period when Ireland was fighting for her independence.
Ella immersed herself in idealistic and mystical dreams amongst the literary and political circles. She risked her own freedom daringly hiding guns for the freedom fighters in attics and secret rooms of the houses in which she lived. Ella spent months throughout this period on Achill Island – in harmony with the inner world – in the undergrowth amongst the fairy forts in County Mayo and in Carrigaholt, County Clare, listening to the folklore from ancient times.
In 1925 she moved to the United States of America. She settled in California where she held a position at the University of California Berkeley, English Department, as the James D. Phelan lecturer in Irish Myth and Lore for a period of ten years. There she studied Mexican and Indian folklore and continued to write, publishing The Unicorn with Silver Shoes in 1932.
While in Ireland Ella had been part of a magical group called the Fellowship of the Four Jewels, the jewels referred to were the four sacred treasures of the Tuatha De Danaan of Ireland – the Sword of Light of Nuada, the Spear of Lugh, the Cauldron of the Dagda, and the Stone of Destiny. These treasures, in actuality, represented the powers of the land of Ireland itself. When Ella came to the USA and connected with the sacred lands in California, she naturally modified her focus to the land of California, while still using the magical structures and Celtic deities with whom she had worked before.
So the Fellowship of the Four Jewels became the Fellowship of Shasta, with Brigid as its main deity. Ella dearly loved Brigid, whom she looked upon as the Earth Goddess herself, and it was to Brigid that the rites of the four yearly festivals performed by the Fellowship were dedicated. Whatever work the Fellowship had done through the years of its existence (from 1931 till Ella’s death in 1956, and from 1960 till the death of her successor Gavin Arthur in 1972), it had certainly left its energetic mark within the lands of the central coast of California!
Elemental forces seep through Ella’s obsession with nature – the song that the Earth sang when in darkness she dreamed of beauty. To her friends and casual observers, the air of otherworldliness in her writings came through in her persona.
Ella lived above the milieu, she had a primitive attitude to life and did not entertain gossip. She loved the sunset + sunrise, the two magical poles of the day. She was aware-awake at those moments when creation is greater! She knew that the veil between reality and unreality, between good and evil, saint and scholar was thin. She had her own religion and was not a member of any organized institution, although she treasured the Madonna and Child!
Ella Young And Her World
Ella Young was a revolutionary on several levels. A prominent figure during the Gaelic renaissance she was a friend and confidante of Maud Gonne who stayed with her on many occasions whilst visiting Dublin from Paris both in the Young family residence in Grosvenor Square and later in Ella’s Terenure home.
The O’Rahilly was also a visitor where they discussed at length the design of the new Irish flag. She broke all conventions of her era to forge a burning thread through Irish revolutionary history.
Her life’s work was the translation and the compilation of Irish myth; she was also a mystic and a poet in her own right.
Dorothea McDowell has broken completely new ground with this comprehensive and thorough research of Ella Young’s inner life and sensibility. Of particular interest to scholars of Irish literature and history is the literary correspondence of Ella Young which the author has carefully collated and which chronicle Young’s thinking and her development as writer and artist.
Northside Today: Radio Play on Irish Cultural figure Ella Young
Dorothea McDowell joins Michael Sullivan to discuss her Radio Play on Irish Cultural figure Ella Young.
First broadcast on 03-06-2025.
Flowering Dusk
Flowering Dusk is Ella’s autobiography, published in 1944. It is a recollection of her life from being born to an Irish Presbyterian family, to theosophy and mysticism, the sacred land, nature beings, fairies. She documents her life in Ireland and her emigration to America in the 1920’s.
Holythorn Press are re-producing her autobiography for a limited run in 2024. Included is a new introduction by Dr. Christina Oakley-Harrington. For more information please check their website.