Eleanor Henrietta Hull

Eleanor Henrietta Hull was a writer, journalist, historian, editor, organist, and scholar of Old Irish. Born in Manchester in 1860 to a family with Irish connections and educated in Dublin, she studied Irish language and literature under scholars including Standish Hayes O’Grady and Kuno Meyer. Her career developed during the Gaelic and Celtic literary revival, when scholars and cultural organizations were making medieval Irish texts available to a wider public.

Hull was a founding member of the Irish Texts Society in 1898 and served as its honorary secretary for nearly three decades. She also became president of the Irish Literary Society and published widely on Irish literature, history, folklore, and legend. Her books included The Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature, A Text Book of Irish Literature, The Northmen in Britain, and The Poem-Book of the Gael. The National University of Ireland awarded her an honorary D.Litt. in 1931.

In The Poem-Book of the Gael, published in 1912, Hull transformed Mary Elizabeth Byrne’s prose translation of Rop tú mo baile into rhymed English verse under the heading A Prayer. She was therefore the versifier and literary adapter of the English hymn, not the translator of the medieval manuscripts. Later hymnal editors altered and selected material from her version, producing several related forms of Be Thou My Vision.