SHE was on first-name terms with some of Ireland's greatest revolutionaries and writers but the importance of Irish nationalist poet and cultural revivalist Alice Milligan is not generally appreciated beyond her native birth and resting place of Omagh.
The woman who entertained WB Yeats to tea in her Belfast home has recently influenced the work of fellow Omagh writer Martina Devlin. Devlin will soon stand at Milligan's grave 150 years after her birth to read an extract from her new short story No Other Place.
The reading is part of the Benedict Kiely festival weekend in Omagh from September 9-11.
Devlin's 4,000-word story was influenced by the inscription on Milligan's grave in the Church of Ireland cemetery in Drumragh outside Omagh which says 'She loved no other place but Ireland'.
An award-winning novelist and columnist herself, Devlin has been intrigued by Milligan's life since she was a schoolgirl. When she was commissioned to write a short story for a forthcoming new anthology (The Glass Shore edited by Sinéad Gleeson) of stories from top northern women writers, she jumped at the chance.
"I just wanted to do it for Alice," says Devlin from her Dublin home. "She was this amazing woman, a poet and writer, Irish theatre and literature producer who by the power of her example from the very inclusive politically and culturally active life that she lived, influenced others, particularly the Celtic revival through her work with the Gaelic League.
"Alice was a feminist who earned her own living from her pen. She practised what she preached. She gave away a lot of her money, particularly in later life.
"I've known about Alice Milligan all my life having been from Omagh and learning her poetry at school. I can still remember chunks of it, The Wake Feast and particularly her poem When I Was A Little Girl which is about a child who feels a little bit different from everyone else and as she's not the same background, she takes a different perspective."
Alice Milligan was born on September 4 1866, the third of 13 children born to middle-class Methodist parents Seaton and Charlotte Milligan, and raised in Gortmore.
Her journey from being a dutiful daughter to becoming an Irish-speaking nationalist who was friends with many of the signatories to the Proclamation in 1916, who was the first person to publish the work of James Connolly (in monthly political and cultural magazine The Shan Van Vocht which she edited) and who stood outside Pentonville jail when Roger Casement was hanged, is a fascinating one.
But Devlin's short story is based on one day of the year, August 3 – the date that Casement was executed – which she knew was an important and poignant one in Milligan's life, having read scores of her letters stored in the National Library in Dublin.
"Alice used to take time out every August 3 to sit at home and quietly reflect to mark the day, making a floral shrine, so I set my story on August 3 1939 – just before the outbreak of another war because questions of patriotism and empire could have come up again then," explains Devlin.
"In later years, it struck me that she was very much an unsung hero of the Celtic Revival and that she has been pushed to the margins like many of the women associated with the Celtic Revival and the 1916 Rising, the aftermath and Partition.
"In the north it was a Protestant state for a Protestant people but then in the Republic there was this quite patriarchal, ultra-conservative state. To me, Alice was a link between those two states and I feel very drawn to her as this link. Her ethos culturally and as a political activist was always to build cultural links between Catholic and Protestant.
"She espoused a progressive radicalism; she stood for an inclusive nationalism which made space within it for Protestantism.
"Alice was very culturally active but she wasn't radical in the sense of armed resistance. She certainly didn't fire a shot for an Irish republic. She was very drawn to the ideals of civic republicanism and equality, regardless of class and gender and background.
"It was unfortunate that Alice, like a number of other key women associated with this period, almost became living ghosts because the input that they could have made would have been significant if they had been allowed."
Despite living in London, Dublin (where she was influenced by Parnellism) and Belfast for most of her adult life, for family reasons Milligan had to return home to Omagh, where she lived until her death at the age of 87.
Devlin adds: "Alice stayed at home to look after her brother in Omagh which was often the lot of the spinster daughter. But had she been part of the Free State and then the Republic, I think she would have made a wonderful contribution, like her contemporaries and Countess Markievicz and Maud Gonne."
Devlin, whose last novel About Sisterland was launched last autumn, is currently working on two new novels – her first children's historical novel, influenced by the discovery of Spanish Armada wrecks off the north coast, and another historical novel inspired by the events of the 1798 rebellion.
:: See martinadevlin.com; more on the Benedict Kiely festival at www.stuleartscentre.com
