Máire Ní Chinnéide
| Máire Ní Chinnéide | |
|---|---|
Máire Ní Chinéide at her graduation
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| Camogie Association of Ireland | |
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In office 1905–1909 |
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| Succeeded by | Elizabeth Burke-Plunkett |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
17 January 1879 Rathmines, County Dublin |
| Died | 25 May 1967 (aged 88) Dublin, Ireland |
| Spouse(s) | Sean MacGearailt (1878–1955) |
| Children | Niamh NicGearailt |
| Profession | Irish language activist |
Máire Ní Chinnéide (English Mary or Molly O'Kennedy) (17 January 1879 – 25 May 1967) was an Irish language activist, playwright, first President of the Camogie Association and first woman president of Oireachtas na Gaeilge.
She was born in Rathmines in 1879 and attended Muckross Park College and Royal University (later the NUI) where she was a classmate of Agnes O'Farrelly, Helena Concannon, and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington.
She learned Irish on holiday in Ballyvourney and earned the first scholarship in Irish from the Royal University, worth £100 a year, which was spent on visits to the Irish college in Ballingeary.
She studied in the school of Old Irish established by professor Osborn Bergin and was strongly influenced by the Irish-Australian professor O'Daly. She later taught Latin through Irish at Ballingeary and became proficient in French, German, Italian and Spanish.
She spent the last £100 of her scholarship on a dowry for her marriage to Sean MacGearailt, later first Accountant General of Revenue in the Irish civil service, with whom she lived originally in Glasnevin and then in Dalkey.
She was a founder member of the radical Craobh an Chéitinnigh, the Keating branch of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaelige), composed mainly of Dublin-based Kerry people and regarded, by themselves at least, as the intellectual focus of the League.
In August 1904, some six years after the establishment of the earliest women's hurling teams, the rules of camogie (then called camoguidheacht), first appeared in Banba, a journal produced by Craobh an Chéitinnigh. Camogie had come to public attention when it was showcased at the annual Oireachtas (Gaelic League Festival) earlier that year, and it differed from men's hurling in its use of a lighter ball and a smaller playing-field. Máire Ní Chinnéide and Cáit Ní Dhonnchadha (like Ní Chinnéide, an Irish-language enthusiast and cultural nationalist), were credited with having created the game, with the assistance of Ní Dhonnchadha's scholarly brother Tadhg Ó Donnchadha, who drew up its rules. She was on the first camogie team to play an exhibition match in Navan in July 1904, became an early propagandist for the game and, in 1905 was elected president of the infant Camogie Association. She wrote:
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