Donagh MacDonagh



Donagh MacDonagh (12 November 1912 – 1 January 1968) was an Irish poet, playwright, judge, presenter, and broadcaster.

Private life
He was born in Dublin and was still a young child when his father Thomas MacDonagh, an Irish nationalist and poet, was executed in 1916. Tragedy struck again when his mother died of a heart attack a year afterwards while swimming at Skerries to Lambay, County Dublin on 9 July 1917.

His parents' families then engaged in a series of custody lawsuits, as the MacDonaghs were Roman Catholic and the Giffords were Protestant; in the climate of Ne Temere, the MacDonaghs were successful.

He and his sister Barbara (who later married actor Liam Redmond) were put into the custody of strangers until their late teens, when they were taken in by Jack MacDonagh and by Eleanor Bingham, County Clare.

He was married twice, to Maura Smyth and Nuala Smyth and he had four children from the two marriages.

He died on 1 January 1968 and is buried at Deans Grange Cemetery.

Career
MacDonagh was educated at Belvedere College and University College Dublin (UCD) with contemporaries Cyril Cusack, Denis Devlin, Charlie Donnelly, Brian O'Nolan, Niall Sheridan and Mervyn Wall.

In 1935 he was called to the Bar and practised on the Western Circuit.

In 1941 he was appointed a District Justice in County Mayo. He was Justice for the Dublin Metropolitan Courts at the time of his death.

Writing
He wrote poetic dramas and ballad operas. He published three volumes of poetry: "Veterans and Other Poems" (1943), The Hungry Grass (1947) and A Warning to Conquerors (1969). He also edited the Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1958) with Lennox Robinson. A play, Happy As Larry, was translated into a number of languages. He had three other plays produced: God's Gentry (a ballad opera about the tinkers), Lady Spinder (about Deirdre of the Sorrows and the Three sons of Ussna and by far his best writing) and Step in the Hollow a piece of situation comedy nonsense. He also wrote short stories. He published ‘’Twenty Poems’’ with Niall Sheridan; staged first Irish production of ‘’Murder in the Cathedral’’ with Liam Redmond, later his brother-in-law. Furthermost he was a popular broadcaster on Radio Éireann.

Poetry Collections

 * 1930 - The Golden Treasury of Irish Verse
 * 1941 - Veterans and Other Poems -, Cuala Press, Dublin 1941
 * 1947 - The Hungry Grass -, Faber & Famer, London 1947
 * 1954 - The Ballad of Jane Shore -, Dolmen Press, Dublin 1954)
 * 1958 - The Oxford book of Irish verse: XVIIth Century - XXth Century, Oxford University Press, 1958 … (Editor with Lennox Robinson)
 * 1969 - A Warning to Conquerors -, Dolmen Press, Dublin 1969 … (Preface by Niall Sheridan)

Plays
A ballad opera. The most successful play in London in post-war years though produced unsuccessfully in New York in an elaborate production by Burgess Meredith. Has been translated into a number of languages A ballad opera. Frequently acted but unpublished play about travellers (Belfast Arts Theatre, August 1951) (A piece of situation comedy nonsense (Gaiety Theatre, 11 Mar. 1957))
 * 1946 - Happy As Larry -, Maurice Fridberg, London 1946
 * 1951 - God's Gentry
 * 1957 - Step in the Hollow -, Penguin 1959
 * 1967 - Do.: A Play in Four Scenes -, Maurice Fridberg, London 1967
 * 1980 - Lady Spider, edited and annotated by Gordon M. Wickstrom, in Journal of Irish Literature, 9 (Sept. 1980), pp. 3–82
 * (unpublished) - Lady Spinder. About Deirdre of the Sorrows and the three sons of Uisnech