Ethna Carbery: Anna Johnston, poet and writer

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