Robin Ernest William Flower (16 October 1881 – 16 January 1946) was an English poet and scholar, a Celticist, Anglo-Saxonist and translator from the

Irish language Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...

. He is commonly known in Ireland as "Bláithín" (Little Flower).

Life

He was born at Meanwood in Yorkshire, and educated at Leeds Grammar School. His parents, Marmaduke and Jane, were from families with Irish ancestry. He was awarded a scholarship to study Classics at Pembroke College, Oxford and graduated with first honours in 1904, before obtaining work as an assistant in the British Museum in 1906. It was during his early years at the museum that he began learning Irish, with the museum authorities supporting his study of the language in Ireland. He married Ida Mary Streeter in 1911. He worked from 1929 as ''Deputy Keeper of Manuscripts'' in the British Museum and, completing the work of Standish Hayes O'Grady, compiled a catalogue of the Irish manuscripts there. He wrote several collections of poetry, translations of the Irish poets for the Cuala Press, and verses on Blasket Island. He first visited Blasket in 1910, at the recommendation of Carl Marstrander, his teacher at the School of Irish Learning in Dublin; he acquired there the Irish nickname Bláithín. He suggested a Norse origin for the name "Blasket". Under Flower's influence, George Derwent Thomson and Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson made scholarly visits to Blasket. After his death his ashes were scattered on the Blasket Islands.

Works

As a scholar of

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

, he wrote on the '' Exeter Book'' He identified interpolations in the Old English Bede, by Laurence Nowell. His work on Nowell included the discovery in 1934, in Nowell's transcription, of the poem '' Seasons for Fasting''. He translated from the writings of Tomás Ó Criomhthain, his Irish language teacher on the Blasket Islands, and wrote a memoir, ''The Western Island; Or, the Great Blasket'' (1944), illustrated by his wife Ida.Née Ida Mary Streeter, she was the sister of the biblical scholar Burnett Hillman Streeter, see http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~soperstuff/Surrey/surrey_notes.htm. The essay collection ''The Irish Tradition'' (1947) is often cited, and was reprinted in 1994; it includes "Ireland and Medieval Europe", his '' John Rhŷs Memorial Lecture'' from 1927.

References

* Bell, ''Sir'' Harold (1948) ''Robin Ernest William Flower; 1881–1946'', in: ''Proceedings of the British Academy'', Vol. 32 (includes bibliography, pp. 23–27)

Notes

External links

*
Translation
of " Pangur Bán", a poem by an 8th (? 9th) century Irish monk about his cat {{DEFAULTSORT:Flower, Robin 1881 births 1946 deaths Celtic studies scholars People educated at Leeds Grammar School Anglo-Saxon studies scholars Translators from Irish English male poets 20th-century English poets 20th-century English translators 20th-century English male writers Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America