I found a copy of Elizabeth Shane’s “Tales Of the Donegal Coast and Islands” in my parents’ house. While I cannot claim to be enthusiastic about her verse as poetry, it is of some interest to me as a record of various locales I am very familiar with.
Elizabeth Shane (1877-1951) was a Belfast-born poet who lived most of her life in Donegal. “Tales of the Donegal Coast and Islands” is a volume of poetry initially published in 1921, though this edition is a 1927 reprint.
Shane contributes a foreword:
These little tales of the west coast and islands of Donegal were begun without any idea of publication. They were simply written for my own and my ‘Mate’s’ pleasure, record of happy days in the place we love best, and of the simple everyday doings of a warm-hearted people among whom we count many friends.
Dialect in verse is apt to become burdensome; I have therefore not attempted to do more than suggest the speech of the district by occasional spelling, and by a characteristic turn of the sentences. The brogue is somewhat elusive, and much slighter than that which one hears further south.
I am inclined to…
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Séamus Sweeney 
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