Born: 9 December 1887, Ireland
Died: 19 July 1916
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Máire Wyse Power
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Lesa Ní Mhunghaile and William Murphy. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Maura (Máire) Wyse Power (1887–1916), Celtic scholar, was born on 9 December 1887 in Fairview, Dublin. She was educated at Loreto College, Stephen’s Green, Dublin, and afterwards at University College Dublin (UCD), where she obtained a first-class honours degree in Celtic studies. Her interest in the Irish language was fostered from an early age during the family holidays in Ring. Both she and her brother and sister were members of Conradh na Gaeilge and in 1905 she won a prize for Irish in senior grade. After graduating she was awarded a travelling scholarship and moved first to the University of Marburg, Germany, and subsequently to the University of Freiburg, Germany, where she studied under the Celtic philologist Rudolf Thurneysen.
In 1912 her work on a fifteenth-century treatise on astronomy in Irish, which had been completed under the supervision of Osborn Bergin, was chosen for publication by the Irish Texts Society. It was published together with an English translation and commentaries under the title An Irish astronomical tract (1914) and established her reputation as a Celtic scholar. She continued her researches while earning a living as a part-time examiner for the Government Intermediate Board. She lost her post in 1916, after accusations that she was sympathetic to those who took part in the rising. She was reinstated, however, but placed herself under tremendous pressure to provide the most accurate examination results possible, and this has been blamed for the loss of her health.
She died after a short illness on 19 July 1916 in the home of family friends in Sandycove, Dublin. The cause of her death was certified as ‘cardiac asthma’ but Marie O’Neill speculates that this may have been a euphemism for tuberculosis. She is interred in Glasnevin cemetery. A memorial plaque was erected by her parents in University Church, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin. A lengthy article on Irish historical poems from the Book of Lismore, entitled ‘Cnuche Cnoc os cionn Life’, was published posthumously in the Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie in 1917.