About Douglas Hyde
Douglas Ross Hyde (Irish: Dubhghlas de hÍde; 17 January 1860 – 12 July 1949), known as An Craoibhín Aoibhinn (lit. transl. the pleasant little branch), was an Irish academic, linguist, scholar of the Irish language, politician, and diplomat who served as the first president of Ireland from June 1938 to June 1945. He was a leading figure in the Gaelic revival, and the first president of the Gaelic League, one of the most influential cultural organisations in Ireland at the time. Aged 14, Hyde was devastated when Hart died, and his interest in the Irish language—the first language he began to study in any detail, as his own undertaking—flagged for a while. Rejecting family pressure that, like past generations of Hydes, he would follow a career as an Anglican clergyman, Hyde instead became an academic.
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