| Collection Description | Rice, Mary Ellen Spring (1880–1924), nationalist, was born 14 September 1880, second child
and only daughter of
Thomas Spring Rice, 2nd Baron Monteagle of Brandon, Co. Kerry, and his wife, Elizabeth (d.
1908), eldest daughter of
Samuel Butcher, bishop of Meath. The family’s principal estate was at Mount Trenchard,
Foynes, Co. Limerick, where
Mary Ellen grew up and learned fluent Irish. Influenced by her cousin, Nelly O’Brien, an
enthusiastic follower of
Douglas Hyde, she joined the Gaelic League in Dublin and London, organised festivals on the
banks of the Shannon,
and hired a native speaker from Kerry to teach classes in the local national school. She was on
the board of her cousin
Nelly’s Coláiste Uí Chomhraí, an Irish summer school established (1912) in Carrigaholt, Co.
Clare. Nicknamed ‘a kind
of parish providence’ (West, 239), she was involved in every endeavour of the local community
and was an early
member of the United Irishwomen, founded in 1910 as a sister organisation to the Irish
Agricultural Organisation
Society (IAOS) of Horace Plunkett, to encourage countrywomen’s industries and handicrafts. In
1911 she was on the
executive of the Limerick branch of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association.
At an agricultural fair in Westminster Hall, London, where she was selling Limerick lace, she was
introduced to Erskine
Childers, who helped foster her growing nationalism. She was on the Anglo-Irish committee
formed in London in May
1914 to help the Irish Volunteers—Alice Stopford Green was chairman, and Childers, Sir Roger
Casement, and Spring
Rice’s cousins Conor and Hugh O’Brien were members. Chief among the committee’s problems
was how to transport
arms from Germany to Ireland; it was Spring Rice who suggested using private yachts for this
purpose. Her first
suggestion was that they use her fishing smack, the Santa Cruz, but as this was in need of
repair, they eventually
settled on Childers’ yacht, the Asgard, and Conor O’Brien’s Kelpie. The Asgard left Conway,
north Wales, on 1 July
1914 with Childers as skipper and five crew, one of whom reported: ‘Miss Spring Rice is a
wonder. She has never
been far to sea before, yet she was hardly ill at all and looks and is most useful’ (Martin, 67).
She kept a meticulous
diary of the journey, which was afterwards published; it reveals her as practical and optimistic.
After picking up its cargo
of 900 rifles by the Ruytigen lightship off the Belgian coast, the Asgard reached Howth, Co.
Dublin, on Sunday 26 July,
where it was met by a file of Volunteers led by Cathal Brugha, who conveyed the arms back to
Dublin.
Spring Rice continued giving practical assistance to the nationalist movement, nursing
Volunteers during the war of
independence and setting up first-aid classes. However, her later years were troubled by
tuberculosis; she entered a
sanitarium in Clwdyy, north Wales, in 1923, and died there 1 December 1924. Her funeral took
place at home in
Foynes, where she was given a guard of honour by the local IRA, the Gaelic League, and trade
unionists. Her Asgard
diary was published in Martin, Howth gun running (1964). [© Bridget Hourican, Dictionary of Irish
Biography] |
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