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 in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

in 1839, the last of twenty children born to Thomas Fison and his second wife, Charlotte. She and her siblings were keen on fairy tales, despite their parents’ disapproval, and would tell stories 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

Eisteddfod In Welsh culture, an ''eisteddfod'' is an institution and festival with several ranked competitions, including in poetry and music. The term ''eisteddfod'', which is formed from the Welsh morphemes: , meaning 'sit', and , meaning 'be', means, a ...

s and the Welsh language. Her brother Lorimer Fison was an anthropologist. In 1851, she married David Walter Thomas. While living in Bangor, they had four children, who they brought up with Welsh culture. Their children included Evan Lorimer Thomas. Fison was an enthusiast for education and she organised evening classes for the local quarrymen. She taught herself Welsh and wrote poetry. When she heard about the research being undertaken by the folklorist Charles Hindis Groome about stories from Suffolk, she wrote to him and told him stories from her childhood, including the

Rumpelstiltskin "Rumpelstiltskin" ( ; ) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in the 1812 edition of ''Children's and Household Tales''. The story is about an imp who spins straw into gold in exchange for a woman's firstborn child. Plot I ...

-type story ''Tom Tit Tot'' and the

Cinderella "Cinderella", or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a Folklore, folk tale with thousands of variants that are told throughout the world.Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Casebook. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. The protagonist is a you ...

-type story ''Cap o’Rushes''. These stories were later taken up by Edward Clodd. Fison was part of the movement which aimed to revive 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. Competito ...

in Cardiff and won a prize for her poem about Llandaff, which was written in English. It is said that Queen Victoria asked for 100 copies of her poem about the death of Prince Albert. She translated 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 from Wales People from Suffolk