The Changemakers: Eileen Costello's inspirational journey from workhouse to Senate

Clodagh Finn recalls Eileen Costello, pioneering music collector, senator and women’s rights activist

Senators Alice Stopford Green and Eileen Costello arriving at Leinster House in December 1922.

There are many reasons to celebrate the life and lasting legacy of Eileen Costello. She was a senator, school principal, women’s rights activist and a pioneering collector of music “who did for folk music what Lady Gregory had done for folktales”, to quote one newspaper report of 1923.

But it is the evidence pointing to her birth, very probably in a workhouse in London, that makes the story of this singular woman all the more remarkable. She was born Edith Drury in London on 27 June 1870. Although little is known of her early life, her daughter Nuala once said that her father was a native of Co Limerick and her mother was Welsh.