Anna Fison known as Morfudd Eryri and Anna Walter Thomas (14 February 1839 – 12 February 1920) was a British translator, poet and educator. She had an interest in fairy tales and an enthusiasm for Welsh culture.

Life

Fison was born in

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

in 1839 as the last of twenty children born to Thomas Fison and his second wife, Charlotte. She and her siblings were keen on fairy tales despite the disapproval of her parents. They would tell tales about fairies including ''Tom Tit Tot'' and ''Cap o'Rushes''. She was educated well both in Europe and in London, and she took a strong interest in languages whilst living with one of her brothers in Oxford. There she met Charles Williams of Jesus College who passed on to her his enthusiasm for Eisteddfods and the Welsh language. In 1851 she married David Walter Thomas and they brought their four children up in the Welsh culture while living at Bangor. Their children included

Evan Lorimer Thomas Evan Lorimer Thomas (21 February 1872 – 9 April 1953) was a Welsh clergyman and Professor of Welsh at St David's College, Lampeter (which later became the University of Wales, Lampeter) from 1903 to 1915. Life Thomas was the son of the a ...

. Fison was an enthusiast for education and she organised evening classes for the local quarryman. She taught herself Welsh and wrote poetry. She got to hear of the research being undetaken by the folklorist

Charles Hindis Groome Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "f ...

about stories of Suffolk. She wrote to him and told him of the stories from her childhood including the Rumpelstiltskin-type story ''Tom Tit Tot'' and the Cinderella type story ''Cap O Rushes''. These stories were later taken up by Edward Clodd. Fison was part of the movement who hoped to redesign the Welsh Eisteddfods during the 1870s and the 1880s. Her bardic name was Morfudd Eryri. In 1883 she attended the

National Eisteddfod The National Eisteddfod of Wales (Welsh: ') is the largest of several eisteddfodau that are held annually, mostly in Wales. Its eight days of competitions and performances are considered the largest music and poetry festival in Europe. Competitors ...

in Cardiff and she won a prize for her poem, written in English, about Llandaff. Her poem about the death of Prince Abert for the Eisteddfod was said to have got Queen Victoria to ask for 100 copies. She did translation work of noted works into and out of Welsh and also from German. In 1884, she was considered as a candidate for the Modern Languages chair at the University College of North Wales in Bangor, but she was not chosen. Her husband died in 1905. Fison died in Dyffryn Ardudwy in 1920.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fison, Anna 1839 births 1920 deaths Writers from Bangor, Gwynedd Welsh poets Linguists People from Suffolk