Robin Ernest William Flower (16 October 1881 – 16 January 1946) was an English poet and scholar, a Celticist, Anglo-Saxonist and translator from the

Irish language Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was ...

. He is commonly known in Ireland as "Bláithín" (Little Flower).

Life

He was born at

Meanwood Meanwood is a suburb and former village in north-west Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. The area sits in the Moortown ward of Leeds City Council and Leeds North East parliamentary constituency. Origins and history The name Meanwood goes back t ...

in Yorkshire, and educated at

Leeds Grammar School Leeds Grammar School was an independent school founded 1552 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Originally a male-only school, in August 2005 it merged with Leeds Girls' High School to form The Grammar School at Leeds. The two schools physicall ...

. His parents, Marmaduke and Jane, were from families with Irish ancestry. He was awarded a scholarship to study Classics at Pembroke College, Oxford and graduated with first honours in 1904, before obtaining work as an assistant in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

in 1906. It was during his early years at the museum that he began learning Irish, with the museum authorities supporting his study of the language in Ireland. He married Ida Mary Streeter in 1911. He worked from 1929 as ''Deputy Keeper of Manuscripts'' in the

and, completing the work of

Standish Hayes O'Grady Standish Hayes O'Grady ( ga, Anéislis Aodh Ó Grádaigh; 19 May 1832 – 16 October 1915) was an Irish antiquarian. He was born at Erinagh House, Castleconnell, County Limerick, the son of Admiral Hayes O'Grady. He was a cousin of the writer St ...

, compiled a catalogue of the Irish manuscripts there. He wrote several collections of poetry, translations of the Irish poets for the

Cuala Press The Cuala Press was an Irish private press set up in 1908 by Elizabeth Yeats with support from her brother William Butler Yeats that played an important role in the Celtic Revival of the early 20th century. Originally Dun Emer Press, from 1908 u ...

, and verses on Blasket Island. He first visited Blasket in 1910, at the recommendation of Carl Marstrander, his teacher at the

School of Irish Learning School of Irish Learning in 1913 The School of Irish Learning was a centre for Irish studies in Dublin founded in 1903 by Kuno Meyer, who talked of "the necessity of bringing the rish revivalistmovement into direct and intimate relations with s ...

in Dublin; he acquired there the Irish nickname Bláithín. He suggested a Norse origin for the name "Blasket". Under Flower's influence,

George Derwent Thomson George Derwent Thomson ( ga, Seoirse Mac Tomáis; 1903 in Dulwich, London – 3 February 1987 in Birmingham) was an English classical scholar, Marxist philosopher, and scholar of the Irish language. Classical scholar Thomson studied Clas ...

and

Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson Prof Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson CBE FRSE FSA DLitt (1 November 1909 – 20 February 1991) was an English linguist and a translator who specialised in the Celtic languages. He demonstrated how the text of the Ulster Cycle of tales, written ''circ ...

made scholarly visits to Blasket. After his death his ashes were scattered on the Blasket Islands.

Works

As a scholar of Anglo-Saxon, he wrote on the ''

Exeter Book The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis or Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is a large codex of Old English poetry, believed to have been produced in the late tenth century AD. It is one of the four major manuscripts of Old Englis ...

'' He identified interpolations in the Old English Bede, by

Laurence Nowell Laurence (or Lawrence) Nowell (1530 – c.1570) was an English antiquarian, cartographer and pioneering scholar of Anglo-Saxon language and literature. Life Laurence Nowell was born around 1530 in Whalley, Lancashire, the second son of Alexand ...

. His work on Nowell included the discovery in 1934, in Nowell's transcription, of the poem '' Seasons for Fasting''. He translated from the writings of Tomás Ó Criomhthain, his Irish language teacher on the Blasket Islands, and wrote a memoir, ''The Western Island; Or, the Great Blasket'' (1944), illustrated by his wife Ida.Née Ida Mary Streeter, she was the sister of the biblical scholar

Burnett Hillman Streeter Burnett Hillman Streeter (1874–1937) was an English Anglican theologian, biblical scholar, and textual critic. Life Streeter was born in Croydon, London, on 17 November 1874 and educated at The Queen's College, Oxford. He was ordained in 1 ...

, see http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~soperstuff/Surrey/surrey_notes.htm. The essay collection ''The Irish Tradition'' (1947) is often cited, and was reprinted in 1994; it includes "Ireland and Medieval Europe", his '' John Rhŷs Memorial Lecture'' from 1927.

References

* Bell, ''Sir'' Harold (1948) ''Robin Ernest William Flower; 1881–1946'', in: ''Proceedings of the British Academy'', Vol. 32 (includes bibliography, pp. 23–27)

Notes

External links

*
Translation
of " Pangur Bán", a poem by an 8th (? 9th) century Irish monk about his cat {{DEFAULTSORT:Flower, Robin 1881 births 1946 deaths Celtic studies scholars People educated at Leeds Grammar School Anglo-Saxon studies scholars Translators from Irish English male poets 20th-century English poets 20th-century translators 20th-century English male writers Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America