Flowering Dusk

by Ella Young

Ella Young was one of Ireland's great artists. Poet, dreamer, singer, she was a member of that brilliant group including Padraic Colum, William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, Dr. Douglas Hyde, Fiona Macleod, George Russell, and James Stephens, which has given such vitality to the Celtic Renaissance in literature.

Flowering Dusk is the story of her life in Ireland and in America, but it is not an autobiography in the usual sense; for out of her vivid imagination and in her own inimitable style she weaves a pattern of pictures with half remembered meaning--pictures of her girlhood in the south of Ireland, the world of elves, fairies and ghosts. Later after graduation from the Royal University in Dublin, she began her researches in Celtic mythology. She sought her materials first hand by learning to speak the Gaelic language and by living among the peasants in isolated regions of Ireland, where the lovely old legends and splendid sagas which are the secret of the Irish peasant spirit, are still kept alive.

356 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1945

About the author

Ella Young was an Irish poet and Celtic mythologist active in the Gaelic and Celtic Revival literary movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. Born in Ireland, Young was an author of poetry and children's books. She emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1925 as a temporary visitor and lived in California. For five years, she gave speaking tours on Celtic mythology at American universities, and in 1931, she was involved in a publicized immigration controversy when she attempted to become a citizen.

Young held a chair in Irish Myth and Lore at the University of California, Berkeley for seven years. At Berkeley, she was known for her colorful and lively persona, giving lectures while wearing the purple robes of a Druid, expounding on legendary creatures such as fairies and elves, and praising the benefits of talking to trees. Her encyclopedic knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject of Celtic mythology attracted and influenced many of her friends and won her a wide audience among writers and artists in California, including poet Robinson Jeffers, philosopher Alan Watts, photographer Ansel Adams, and composer Harry Partch, who set several of her poems to music.

Later in life, she served as the "godmother" and inspiration for the Dunites, a group of artists living in the dunes of San Luis Obispo County. She retired to the town of Oceano, where she died at the age of 88.