[1] Edith Drury became a teacher at St Michael's Church of England school, Buckingham Palace Road, London.

[2] She converted to Roman Catholicism and, in 1903, she married Thomas Bodkin Costello (1864–1956), a medical doctor, historian, and fellow Gaelic Leaguer.

Although she supplied extensive source-notes to the songs and information on their backgrounds (with English translations mainly by others), her motivation was not academic.

She intended her volume primarily 'for popular use in the schools and Gaelic League classes of Connacht'.

She was one of only two of the women senators who spoke against the Civil Service Regulation Bill, which would make it legal for the government to confine certain jobs to specific sexes and the Juries Bill which would require women to volunteer for jury service instead of it being a standard part of citizenship.