Lissadell House and Gardens Sligo

Lissadell House and Gardens, Sligo, Ireland

EVA GORE BOOTH

Poet & Suffragist

1870 - 1926

Born at Lissadell in 1870, EVA GORE BOOTH, suffragist, artist and poet, was steadfastly devoted to her elder sister Constance Markievicz all her life, although she spent many years in Manchester working to alleviate the condition of working women. Letters to Eva from Constance were preserved by Eva’s long time companion and biographer, Esther Roper. Eva died some months before Constance, who was heartbroken.

Eva made this promise to her sister:

"We meet beyond earth's barred gate

where all the world's wild Rebels are"

(recited in the film Song for a Raggy Boy).

A gentle, spiritual and sympathetic person, Eva was always interested in expressing herself in poetry and drawing. The poet William Butler Yeats responded to her sympathetic nature by confiding in her his (unrequited) love for the beautiful Maud Gonne. He also encouraged her poetic aspirations, advising her that ‘whenever the feeling is weightiest you are at your best’.

Yeats was editing the works of English Poet William Blake at the time, and clearly influenced Eva’s reading. Her three volume copy of the work is now in the Yeats’ study at Lissadell. Eva’s first book of poetry was published in 1898. Many of Eva’s drawings, and beautiful editions of her poetry, are now on display in Lissadell.

Eva’s most beautiful poetry is of her childhood memories of Sligo:

The little waves of Breffny

The grand road from the mountain goes shining to the sea
And there is traffic on it and many a horse and cart,
But the little roads of Cloonagh are dearer far to me
And the little roads of Cloonagh go rambling through my heart.

A great storm from the ocean goes shouting o’er the hill,
And there is glory in it; and terror on the wind:
But the haunted air of twilight is very strange and still,
And the little winds of twilight are dearer to my mind.

The great waves of the Atlantic sweep storming on their way,
Shining green and silver with the hidden herring shoal;
But the little waves of Breffny have drenched my heart in spray,
And the little waves of Breffny go stumbling through my soul.