Myles Dillon

Myles Dillon
Born	Myles Patrick Dillon (1900-04-11)11 April 1900 Dublin, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Died	18 June 1972(1972-06-18) (aged 72) Monkstown Hospital, County Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Spouse	Elizabeth Mary La Touche ​ ​ (m. 1938)​
Children	5, including John M. Dillon
Parents	John Dillon (father) Elizabeth Mathew (mother)
Relatives	James Dillon (brother) John Blake Dillon (paternal grandfather) James Charles Mathew (maternal grandfather)
Academic background
Education	University College Dublin (B.A., 1921; M.A., 1922) University of Bonn (Ph.D., 1925)
Doctoral advisor	Rudolf Thurneysen
Academic work
Institutions	Trinity College Dublin (1928–1930) University College Dublin (1930–1937) University of Wisconsin (1937–1946) University of Chicago (1946–1947) University of Edinburgh (1947–1949) Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (1949–1968)
Main interests	Comparative philology Celtic studies Sanskrit

Myles Patrick Dillon (11 April 1900 – 18 June 1972) was an Irish scholar whose primary interests were comparative philology, Celtic studies, and Sanskrit.

Life

Myles Dillon was born in Dublin; he was one of six children of John Dillon and his wife Elizabeth Mathew; James Matthew Dillon, the leader of Fine Gael, was his younger brother.

Myles Dillon graduated from University College Dublin, than travelled to Germany and France, where he studied in deep Old Irish and Celtic philology under Joseph Vendryes and Rudolf Thurneysen. Dillon taught Sanskrit and comparative philology in Trinity College, Dublin (1928–1930) and University College, Dublin (1930–1937). In 1937 moved to USA, where he taught Irish in the University of Madison (his son John M. Dillon was born in Madison), in 1946–1947 taught in Chicago. On his return to Ireland worked in the School of Celtic Studies in Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies; was the director of the School from 1960 till 1968, edited Celtica. Volume 11 of Celtica is dedicated to his memory. From 1966 to 1967 he was President of the Royal Irish Academy.

Myles Dillon is the author of a number of important scholarly books, handbooks and translations from Old Irish. Among his most notable works are The Cycles of the Kings (1946), Early Irish literature (1948), The Celtic realms (1967, with Nora Kershaw Chadwick). M. Dillon published a modern translation and commentary of The Book of Rights (Template:Lang-sga, 1962). He also translated Dieux et héros des Celtes by Marie-Louise Sjoestedt into English, thus making the book available for a wider scholarly audience. The monograph Celts and Aryans, published posthumously by the Indian Institute of Advanced Study reflects Dillon's interest in the traces of the shared heritage in the Indian and Irish cultures deriving from Proto-Indo-European society based on a period of research Dillon spent in Simla, India.

Publications

• Dillon, Myles (1946). The Cycles of the Kings. London: Oxford University Press.
• Dillon, Myles (1948). Early Irish Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Dillon, Myles, ed. (1954). Early Irish Society. Dublin: Cultural Relations Committee of Ireland.
• Dillon, Myles, ed. (1959). Irish Sagas. Dublin: Thomas Davis Lectures.
• Dillon, Myles; Ó Cróinín, Donncha (1961). Teach Yourself Irish. London: English Universities Press.
• Dillon, Myles, ed. (1962). Lebor na Cert: The Book of Rights. Dublin: Irish Texts Society.
• Dillon, Myles; Chadwick, Nora K. (1967). The Celtic Realms. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
• Dillon, Myles (1975). Celts and Aryans: Survivals of Indo-European Speech and Society. Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
• Fisher, Joachim; Dillon, John, eds. (1999). The Correspondence of Myles Dillon, 1922-1925: Irish–German Relations and Celtic Studies. Dublin: Four Courts Press.

External links

• Recording of Dillon reading eleven early Irish lyrics, c. 1956