A chara, – During September 1926, WB Yeats was at the early stage of composing his poem Sailing to Byzantium. At the time, he was a guest of Arthur and Maud Bourn Vincent and residing with them at Muckross House on Muckross Estate, Killarney.
Later that month, the writer and environmentalist Sir Shane Leslie and his wife, of Castle Leslie Estate, were also visitors there. To celebrate the occasion Maud Bourn Vincent hosted a dinner party and a century ago this month Yeats, Shane Leslie and Arthur Vincent discussed at length the need for and the creation of a national park somewhere in the fledgling Irish Free State.
These men had each played their part in the Irish nation-building process during the preceding years. However, they could not have foreseen the events that were to unfold 28 months later. While travelling home to visit her ailing parents in California, Maud Bourn Vincent was hospitalised with pneumonia in New York City and, aged 47, she died there in February 1929.
Maud’s untimely death was to be the catalyst for the creation of Ireland’s first national park. When her beloved Muckross Estate was gifted and entrusted to the Irish Free State three years later, the State-owned property became known as Bourn Vincent Memorial Park on January 1st, 1933. – Yours, etc,
RM Block
SEÁN A LOONEY,
Cill Áirne,
Co Chiarraí.
