Ethna Carbery, born Anna Bella Johnston, was an Irish journalist, writer and poet. She is best known for writing the poem and song “Roddy McCorley”, and the “Song of Ciabhán”; the latter was set to music by Ivor Gurney. In Belfast in the late 1890s, with Alice Milligan she produced The Shan Van Vocht, a nationalist monthly of literature, history and comment that gained a wide circulation in Ireland and in the Irish diaspora. Her poetry was collected and published after her death under the pen name Ethna Carbery, adopted following her marriage to the poet Seumas MacManus in 1901.
Works
The Four Winds of Eirinn (1902) - poems The Passionate Hearts (1903) - stories In the Celtic Past (1904) - hero tales We Sang for Ireland: Poems of Ethna Carbery, Séamus MacManus, Alice Milligan (1950) - poetry The Love-Talker - poetry Death of Sweet Roses - poetry
Niamh by Ethna Carbery
The King of Ireland’s Cairn by Ethna Carbery
A Glen Song by Ethna Carbery
Mo Chraoibhin Cno by Ethna Carbery (Anna MacManus)
Rody M’corley by Ethna Carbery
The Passing of the Gael