Margaret BURKE-SHERIDANs likeness appears in a wonderful pencil drawing by Sean O SULLIVAN (1906-64), now in the National Gallery of Ireland. Margaret was born in Castlebar, Co. Mayo, on 15 Oct 1889. Both of her parents died when she was four and she was raised in a Dublin orphanage where a musically perceptive nun saw to it that she went to London for voice training. The seventeen-year-old Irish girl with great beauty possessed a fresh and youthful voice, a deep pathos in her singing aided by the color and richness of her Gaelic vowels and a striking personality. She was blunt of speech, quarrelled often with Toscanini, but apparently also had a devastating wit. She was to gain a number of supporters and friends including inventor Guglielmo Marconi, baritone Mattia Battistini, the reknown composer, Puccini, and poet William Butler YEATS. Margaret was not especially literary and Yeats was notoriously unmusical, but singer and writer became fast friends after she retired to Dublin in 1936. This woman who began life as an ophan was to go on to wear exquisite silk costumes and perform at La Scala and Covent Garden. Ms. Burke-Sheridan died in 1958. A portrait of of the diva by Gaetano de Gennaro appears in Dublin's Gaiety Theatre. -- Excerpt, "Ireland of the Welcomes"