Helena Mary Mennie Shire, 1912-1991

Helena Mary Mennie was born in Aberdeen on 21 June 1912. She was educated at the Aberdeen High School for Girls, gaining the Dux medal in 1929, and at the University of Aberdeen, graduating with First Class Honours in English Literature and Language in 1933.

After taking a First in Part II of the English Tripos in 1935 at Newnham College, Cambridge, she continued her studies there over the next two years, undertaking a special study of broadside ballads of the seventeenth century, focusing particularly on the 'Bedlam Ballads'.

In 1936 she married Edward Shire, a physicist and Fellow of King's College, and they had three children.

Her teaching career began in 1935, when she started lecturing in Cambridge. During World War II, she lectured in Cambridge and the surrounding counties for the Workers' Educational Association and the University Board of Extra-mural Studies. With the outbreak of war, many colleges and universities from London were evacuated to Cambridge. During this time Mrs Shire held an appointment as a Lecturer in Mediaeval English Literature at Queen Mary College, London, for two years, and another for three years at the London School of Economics as a lecturer in English for Foreign Students. She built up particularly strong and lasting friendships with Polish students. After the War, she supervised for several Cambridge colleges and was for some time a College Lecturer for King's College, Cambridge. She was a Fellow of Robinson College from its foundation in 1974.

In 1952, Mrs Shire successfully applied for the first of several small expense grants from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for help with research to investigate the poetry and music of Scotland between 1500 and 1700. The Trust subsequently awarded her a Senior Research Fellowship in Arts from 1961 to 1963 and a travelling bursary for a research visit to the USA in 1971.

This large and important project, under the auspices of Professor Thurston Dart, then Lecturer in Music at Jesus College, and general editor of the Musica Britannica series, was to continue over many years with the assistance of Kenneth Elliott (of the University of Glasgow), who was then beginning his research work into early Scottish music. The aim of the project was to survey and publish Scottish music and poetry found in manuscripts and relatively inaccessible early printed books, in order to provide an overall picture of the literary and musical situation in Scotland between 1500 and 1700. It uncovered several important sources, such as the Robert Edwards' commonplace book (Panmure MS 11) and resulted in the publication in 1957 by Stainer and Bell of Music of Scotland 1500-1700, Musica Britannica, 15, ed. by Kenneth Elliott, song-texts ed. by Helena Mennie Shire, (2nd ed. 1964, 3rd ed. 1975). She also published the Ninth of May series, and many shorter articles and papers. During the 1950s she broadcast for the BBC Third Programme on the subject. She took part, too, in a number of presentations of Scottish music and song organised by the Saltire Society in Edinburgh and Cambridge. Helena Mennie Shire's work in this field culminated in the publication of her influential work, Song, Dance and Poetry of the Court of Scotland under King James VI (Cambridge University Press, 1969). As a writer on a Scottish subject, and in recognition of her parents, she adopted the name Helena Mennie Shire.

The subject of Scottish court poetry and culture and its relationship with court culture in France, England and Italy continued as Helena Mennie Shire's special field of interest, and during the Seventies and Eighties she attended many conferences on Scottish literature and language, both in Scotland and abroad, at which she delivered papers, in English or French, later published in the conference proceedings.

From 1961 until an advanced age she was on the Council of the Saltire Text Society.

She also undertook research in several other areas. In the Seventies she embarked on a large research project on Edmund Spenser, entailing a visit to Ireland. In 1975, she attended the North Cork Writers' Festival. Her book A Preface to Spenser was published in 1978. In the mid-Seventies she was also asked to contribute a chapter on The Lyric and the Renaissance to Literature and Western Civilisation, ed. by David Daiches and A Thorlby, vol. 3: The Old World: Discovery and Rebirth (London: Aldus, 1974).

Over the final decade of her life, Mrs Shire undertook another major project as a memorial to Olive Fraser, a friend of Aberdeen and Newnham days, who died in 1977. A short volume of Olive Fraser's poems was published in 1981 by Aberdeen University Press as The Pure Account . A second larger volume, with an account of Olive Fraser's career, was published as The Wrong Music by Canongate Press in 1989.

Helena Mennie Shire continued to be involved in academic life, teaching and attending conferences, almost up to the time of her death. In 1988, in recognition of her enormous achievement and contribution to the field of Scottish culture, she was awarded an honorary LLD by her alma mater, the University of Aberdeen. Two years later she was further honoured by a festschrift , with contributions by colleagues and friends from many countries and universities, edited by Alisoun Gardner-Medwin and Janet Hadley Williams: A Day Estivall: Essays on the Music, Poetry and History of Scotland and England and Poems Previously Unpublished in honour of Helena Mennie Shire (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1990).

Helena Mennie Shire died on 16 Nov 1991, sadly missed by generations of pupils and colleagues whom she had generously encouraged, befriended and fostered in scholarly careers. The extensive correspondence in the collection bears witness to this.

Further information about her life and career can be gained from material in the collection (particularly sections MS 3407/1, 3, 4); the University of Aberdeen Roll of Graduates, and the Aberdeen University Review, 30 (1942-44), 366; 53 (1989-90), 69-71, 166, 329-32; and 54 (1991-92), 392-5, 413-4. A Day Estivall contains a very useful list of Helena Mennie Shire's scholarly contributions.

Two articles found amongst her papers after her death were published posthumously in Stewart Style 1513-1542, ed. by Janet Hadley Williams (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1996): The King in his House: Three Architectural Artefacts belonging to the Reign of James V, pp 62-96; and Music for 'Goddis Glore and the Kingis, pp 118-141.

From the guide to the Papers of Helena Mennie Shire, 1832 - 1990s, (University of Aberdeen)