Proinsias Mac Cana


Proinsias Mac Cana was an academic and Celtic scholar. He held professorships at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies and University College Dublin.

Career

Proinsias Mac Cana was born in Belfast on 6 July 1936 to George McCann and his wife Mary Catherine, née Mallon; his Catholic parents were supporters of Irish nationalism. He attended Queen's University Belfast, graduating with a degree in Celtic languages in 1948. After a year at the Sorbonne, he completed a Master of Arts degree at Queen's, where he was appointed an assistant lecturer in 1951. Two years later, the university awarded him a doctorate. In 1955, he moved to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, as an assistant lecturer in Early Irish. In 1957, he was promoted to a lectureship. While there, he taught Old and Middle Welsh. In 1961, he was appointed Professor of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies and two years later became Professor of Welsh at University College Dublin where he became Professor of Early Irish in 1971. In 1985, he returned to the Dublin Institute to take up a senior professorship, and retired in 1996 afterwards being appointed to emeritus professorship. He had been President of the Royal Irish Academy between 1979 and 1982.
According to The Irish Times, Mac Cana's "main field of research was early Irish tales, and the mythology informing them, and in this field he was pre-eminent.... He broadened and deepened the understanding of the links between the languages, cultures and traditions of the Celtic peoples of Ireland and Britain. And through his scholarship and teaching he was an interpreter of the Irish to the Welsh and of the Welsh to the Irish." Mac Cana published widely and in retirement worked to restore the Collège des Irlandais in Paris. He died on 21 May 2004.

Honours and awards

Mac Cana was a member of Academia Europaea and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Gustavus Adolphus Academy. In 1997, the British Academy awarded him its Derek Allen Prize for Celtic Studies. He was also awarded honorary doctorates by several universities, and was presented with a Festschrift: Ildánach Ildírech in 1999.

Selected publications