Ella Young (1867-1956) was born in Fenagh, County Antrim, in Ireland, one of several daughters in the Protestant Young family. As a student at the Royal University, she studied economy, history and law, and developed an interest in Irish mythology and folklore. This interest in all things Irish rather naturally led her to support the Republican cause, and shortly after she began writing for Sinn Féin, she also began gun-running for the Irish Republican Army. During the Rising (in her own words, "a thing that counted greatly in my life"[1]), she was blacklisted and fled to Connemara. She returned to Dublin in 1919, remaining there until leaving to lecture in the United States in 1925.

After touring the US as a lecturer for six years, she was granted citizenship and settled in California to teach at the University of California at Berkeley and continue her folklore studies, shifting her focus to Mexican and Native American legends. Retiring only when she no longer had the energy to teach, she lived out the rest of her life gardening, writing, and attending to the whims of her cats.

According to both friends and casual observers, the air of otherworldliness present in Young's writing also spilled over into her everyday persona, causing her friend and fellow writer Padraic Colum to refer to has as "a reincarnated Druidess."[2] Eve Riehle noted that "no words could describe her,"[3] but this circumstance does not seem to have stopped her biographers from trying. They depict her as wise and whimsical, dignified and merry, fierce and gentle, all in the same moment. A reclusive and unconventional person, she nevertheless had a charismatic and authoritative presence that was only underscored by

Ella Young (1867-1956) was born in Fenagh, County Antrim, in Ireland, one of several daughters in the Protestant Young family. As a student at the Royal University, she studied economy, history and law, and developed an interest in Irish mythology and folklore. This interest in all things Irish rather naturally led her to support the Republican cause, and shortly after she began writing for Sinn Féin, she also began gun-running for the Irish Republican Army. During the Rising (in her own words, "a thing that counted greatly in my life"[1]), she was blacklisted and fled to Connemara. She returned to Dublin in 1919, remaining there until leaving to lecture in the United States in 1925.

After touring the US as a lecturer for six years, she was granted citizenship and settled in California to teach at the University of California at Berkeley and continue her folklore studies, shifting her focus to Mexican and Native American legends. Retiring only when she no longer had the energy to teach, she lived out the rest of her life gardening, writing, and attending to the whims of her cats.

According to both friends and casual observers, the air of otherworldliness present in Young's writing also spilled over into her everyday persona, causing her friend and fellow writer Padraic Colum to refer to has as "a reincarnated Druidess."[2] Eve Riehle noted that "no words could describe her,"[3] but this circumstance does not seem to have stopped her biographers from trying. They depict her as wise and whimsical, dignified and merry, fierce and gentle, all in the same moment. A reclusive and unconventional person, she nevertheless had a charismatic and authoritative presence that was only underscored by her immense store of knowledge, which spanned topics ranging "from American politics to the art of Rodin, from the tantrums of royal mistresses to the spiritual stature of Schweitzer, never overlooking for long, the high thinking of certain horses, or the nobility of her current cat."[4]

During her life, Young was known best for her work in the Celtic Revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Working extensively with Irish mythology and folklore, she re-wrote the material into stories for children. Her Celtic Wonder Tales (1910), The Wonder-Smith and His Son (1927), The Tangle-Coated Horse (1929), and The Unicorn with Silver Shoes (1932) were quite popular and are all still in print in some form. (Celtic Wonder Tales is the only one of the four still printed as its own book.) In addition, she lectured on mythology and wrote poetry. Young's contributions to the corpus of Arthurian Literature are limited to three poems, "The San-Grail" (originally published in The Rose of Heaven, 1918), "A Song that Trostan Made," and "Trostan Made This," (both originally published in The Weird of Fionavar, 1922). All three deal with illicit love, but in very different ways. "The San-Grail" evokes a feeling of capture and confinement, detailing how Lancelot is prevented from achieving grace and moral release because of his persistent desire for his lord's queen. The meter of the poem reflects this, tripping along in a regular fashion through the first three lines of each stanza, but in the fourth suddenly halts, yanking the reader back and denying the completion of the anticipated and desired metrical resolution, just as Lancelot is unexpectedly denied the relief of seeing the Grail or the Grail Maiden when the "Grail Maiden" in his vision turns out to be Guinevere. At the end of the poem, the reader is left with an impression of stagnation and despair as Lancelot is trapped by the fake Maiden's "enshadow"-ing hair and pale, still face.

The two Trostan poems take a completely different approach, as though Young considered this pair of lovers to be victims of fortune rather than traitors against their liege lord. The lovers' emotions, as depicted by Young, have a quality of innocence that is lacking in her depiction of Lancelot and Guinevere's relationship. In "A Song that Trostan Made," a short blank verse poem, the speaker's words reflect his longing for his beloved, but contain no hint of the complicated situation he faces. The spare lines of "Trostan Made This" grow slightly darker, as the speaker laments love's "short blossoming," but the dark notes are limited to sadness, and remain untinged with anger or betrayal. Though apparently on his deathbed and believing that Isolde has abandoned him in his hour of need, no bitterness leaks through, only regret and acceptance. It is this acceptance that creates the most telling disparity between the Trostan poems and "The San-Grail." Rather than being trapped by love as is Lancelot, Trostan is free and ready for his death, and Young leaves the reader with a much more favorable impression of the pair of Celtic lovers than of the more Gallicized pair, a circumstance that is perhaps due to her own affections for the Celtic cause.

1 originally quoted in World Authors 1900-1950, vol 4. ed. Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens. New York : H.W. Wilson, 1996.

2 Padraic Colum, Ella Young, an Appreciation. London: Longmans, Green & Company, 1931. 4.

3 Eve Riehl, "The Shining Land of Ella Young." The Dublin Magazine. 33:2 (Apr./June 1958). 17.

4 Riehl, 20.