Máire Wyse Power

Maura "Máire" Wyse Power (9 December 1887 – 19 July 1916) was an Irish Celtic scholar.

Biography Maura "Máire" Wyse Power was born at 7 Royal Terrace (now Inverness Road) Fairview, Dublin on 9 December 1887. She was one of four children of restaurateur Jennie and journalist John Wyse Power who were both active nationalists. Her younger sister was Nancy, who would also become a Celtic scholar. The family were friendly with that of James Joyce, and Wyse Power is believed to have inspired the character Mary Elizabeth Cleary in Stephen Hero.

She attended Loreto College, Stephen's Green and then University College Dublin (UCD), one of a small number of women permitted to attend at the time. She graduated with a first-class honours degree in Celtic studies. She had developed a love of Irish during numerous family holidays to the Gaeltacht at Ring, County Waterford. Along with her sister and brother, Wyse Power was a member of Conradh na Gaeilge, winning a prize for Irish at senior grade in 1905. Following her graduation from UCD, she won a travelling scholarship, going first to the University of Marburg, Germany, and then to the University of Freiburg, studying under Rudolf Thurneysen. but her mother's biographer, Maire O'Neill, speculated that this may have been a euphemism for tuberculosis. She is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. Her parents erected a memorial plaque to her in University Church, St Stephen's Green. Her article on Irish historical poems from the Book of Lismore, "Cnuche Cnoc os cionn Life", was published posthumously in the Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie (1917).