Maartje Draak, Professor of Celtic Languages and Literature has died in Amsterdam. She began her teaching career in the Universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht in 1946. She was made a professor in 1955 and although she retired officially in 1977 she continued to work in the field until a few months ago. Draak is the Dutch for dragon and black dragons on the cover of a book of Chinese folk tales that she found in 1918 was to open the door on her life's main work, the study of old stories, and the greatest number of them were to be Irish in origin. She felt a natural affinity with Ireland, first coming here in 1937 for one year to study the Irish Arthur texts, her major in college having been the Arthur texts in Middle Dutch, Old French and Middle Welsh. In a talk she gave at a function to honour her work on her 80th birthday, she spoke of the excitement in meeting the greats in Celtology in Dublin in that time, Osborn Bergin, R. I. Best and Eleanor Knott, of her friendship with Gerard Murphy and James Delargy.
I was introduced to her in Amsterdam two years ago by a mutual friend, Sonja Landweer. She was a collector and her collections had over run her apartment. For her alone it had been fine. She could move along her "rabbit runs" as she called them, narrow passages that went from bed to study table, to bathroom, to cooker and wash sink. Then cancer came on top of old age and Frida de Jong, Maartje's companion in scholarship in the last 20 years had begun to make space for the others who would be needed to help care for her, and I was brought in as an occasional helper being familiar with the handling of fragile objects.
She was very strong, with an indomitable spirit. I was told by those former students who were still close to her and loved her that she had been a truly great teacher and a splendidly eloquent public speaker. In the time I knew her she had become quite silent, sitting - not undragonlike - in the midst of her treasure that was cloaked in a soft white dust. She had never cared to dust, saying once to me that she had never noticed that anything had ever needed dusting. Glowing through and sometimes submerged in this dust were statues of Buddhas and Hindi gods, of exotic animals in clay, wood and bronze; of vessels in porcelain, earthenware and glass; of lacquer ware, scrolls and paintings from all over the Far and Middle East. For 20 years from 1966 she was a member of the board of The Society of Friends of Asian Art, whose work is to bring private collections into public exhibitions.
There were stacks of books everywhere. The library was almost inaccessible, the wall had long since been filled and books covered every other smidgen of space but for the run from door to desk. Closest to her where she normally sat were her Irish books and by her feet lay the much used volumes of the Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of the Irish Language. I read that, of all the papers she has written in her field of study, one of the most satisfying to her was on the higher teaching of Latin grammar in Ireland during the 19th century. Her last great work, which she did with Frida de Jong, was to make Irish stories available to the general Dutch reader. These were published in three volumes and appeared in 1979, 1986 and 1990. The first began with the oldest tales from the Tain and the last concluded with tales and anecdotes on the fili.
In the broad scope of Maartje Draak's scholarship and collections there is a vein that runs throughout, a deep love for the imagination at play, all the more pungent for its base in knowledge. I have enjoyed being in her company in these last two years. A light has gone out.