WILLIAM A. BYRNE (1872-1933)

Poet and Professor of English at University College, Galway

Student 1892-99

 

 

William A. Byrne was born in 1872 in Rathangan, Co. Kildare into a family that also produced Peter Byrne, a well-known classicist who spent much of his life as a teacher on the staff of St. Kieran's College, Kilkenny, where he was the mentor of William Meaney, Professor of Classics at Maynooth and Fr. John Byrne S.J. Several uncles, a grand uncle and a great-grand-uncle on the Murray side of the family were priests of the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin.

Byrne went to the Carlow Lay College (later Knockbeg College) for his secondary education, and may have spent a short time at the ecclesiastical college then on the same site before in 1889 entering Maynooth for service as a diocesan priest in the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin. During his time there he showed strong literary promise, and in the run-up to the centenary of the foundation of the college, was commissioned to write a celebratory ode (see below)

Having experienced continuous ill health, he left Maynooth a short time before ordination and travelled to Switzerland for recuperation, and the to London where he graduated in English and French.

During this time he published a volume of poetry, 'A Light on the Broom' (1901) under the pen-name William Dara. It has been written that 'Love of nature, of Ireland and its storied past and its saints and martyrs, are the themes of many of William Byrne's poems' as demonstrated in this excerpt:

I sing of manhood dignified by toil,

And children growing holy as the soil;

I tell of undisturbing faith kept warm

At hearths where purity hath said a charm;

Of one that singeth to his heart in vain,

Under the sun, the moon, the passionate rain,

Of lovely faces wandering in a wood;And peace the eternal dew of solitude;

And curlews coming in the night in streams;

And angels bending o'er a peasant's dreams,

I chaunt a folk unearthly as the sea,

That sings for ever of eternity;

Whose aging hearts grow simpler than a child's

Amid the pleasing of these broomy wilds.

Between 1904 and 1914, he was Professor of English at Knockbeg College. In 1916, he was appointed an Assistant in the Department of English at University College Dublin, a vacancy created by the execution of Thomas McDonagh after the 1916 Rising. In the following year he was appointed to the Chair of English at University College Galway and he held this post until his death in 1933 at the age of 61. 

The Irish Independent reported his death in its issue of 22 May 1933 as follows:

Mr. William A. Byrne, M.A., Professor of English, University College, Galway died at the Eglington Hotel Galway aged about 59.  He was educated at Knockbeg College, Carlow, and spent 7 years at Maynooth.  While there, in 1895, he wrote the ode on the celebration of the centenary of Maynooth College.  Amongst his class fellows were the late Most Rev. Dr. Healy, Most Rev. Dr. Mannix. and Very Rev. J Hynes. M.A., B.D., the present Registrar of U.C. College, Galway.

Finding he had no vocation for the priesthood, he left Maynooth. His health broke down, and he later spent some time in Switzerland.  Later he studied in Dublin and graduated in London with first class honours in English and French.  He wrote a little, but will be remembered by one volume of poems, “The Light on her Broom.”  One of his brothers was a distinguished member of the Society of Jesus.