As a teacher at Greenock High School in the 1950s and 1960s, she was a familiar and formidable sight clad in her navy jumper and a heavy tweed skirt, which seemed thicker than most folk’s carpets.

Her hallmark, however, was her Lisle stockings: bullet-proof and brown. We, the class, apprehensive curious, mildly amused at the stockings, sat silent, in awe, at the presence of someone we all felt was special.

Then she spoke, her face illuminated by the words of her mouth, her eyes bright and piercing her hair glossy, black and lively – and after a few words we all knew that she was special. She told us she was Miss Irving.

I was to learn much from Mabel over the ensuing years and I was to learn much about Mabel, too.

Her love of Shakespeare was evident and her knowledge of his works was encyclopaedic.

She charmed us with Lamb, Milton, Keats and Burns but always she spoke of Shakespeare and his plays for she was a lover of drama and language and to her he was the master of both these things.

Sometimes I watched her as she trudged off home at the end of school, her flat shoes rhythmically thumping like the paddles of the Jeannie Deans as she headed to South Street and her mother, for whom she both cared and sacrificed so much.

Mabel had been born in Greenock just as the First World War

was at its height.

She attended the town’s Clune Park Primary School. When the family later moved to South Street, Greenock, Mabel went to Greenock Academy and subsequently to Glasgow University.

A star student in all of these

places, her life was severely jolted when her father died suddenly and Mabel felt she must become the breadwinner. She left the university life to go to Jordanhill with a view to becoming a teacher.

One of the lecturers there, a Mr Campbell, with amazing foresight, told her: “Your name will travel where your feet won’t take you.” Mabel’s poetry has, indeed, done just that, for as bard of Greenock Burns Club her annual poem reached every corner of the globe.

So much so that a letter addressed simply to “Mabel, Greenock” was safely delivered to her home.

Her early upbringing had ensured that she maintained throughout her life a love of God and a sincere belief in the Gospel. Christian values permeated every aspect of the life of this remarkable lady.

There are many legacies of Mabel Irving and one was the formation of an after-school drama club at Greenock High. It was way ahead of its time and produced many fine actors: Bill Bryden, Richard Wilson and Mary Riggans are just three who achieved great prominence on stage and TV.

One of Mabel’s many wonderful attributes was that of resilience. I remember what happened when her mother died and everyone felt that she would go under in a welter of grief and pain. She decided to bounce back with life. Out went the dull and heavy skirt, gone was the dark and sombre jumper, and no more the bullet-proof Lisle stockings – a metamorphosis took place and a panoply of colour ensued. Mabel was back – and in Technicolor.

Her sense of humour sharpened. One day, when I visited her in South Street, she had lost her voice. She asked me why I was smiling. I said: “Mabel, the good Lord takes his time. I remember praying for this 40 years ago. Now he has answered.”

Although Mabel’s passion was for Shakespeare’s plays, it was in Burns’s poetry and the Doric that she derived her most joyous satisfaction.

Speaking, writing and teaching on the Ayrshire bard was to become the most dominant feature of her later life. She was recognised by the Burns Federation and given honorary membership.

She was the first woman member of Greenock Burns Club and, having cracked that particular egg, became its first woman president. Her Doric poems and witty verses to sum up Greenock Burns celebration dinners were legion and loved.

These and so much more are the memories of one of Mabel’s boys, but I know that there are many whose school memories are of her time in Finnart School, where she was just as proud of her “girls” as she was of her high school “boys”. There are those, too, who remember her from Ladyburn School in Greenock or during her final teaching years in that town’s Grove Park Secondary.

Wherever she was, and in whatever school she taught, she left an abiding memory of dedication and education. She took with her, too, a pride in those schools which she never gave up.

In her final years Mabel enjoyed the wonderful attention of Bagatelle Nursing Home in Greenock. The constant and loving care of the staff there was something which Mabel not only cherished but which came as a great relief to those of her friends who cared so much for her.

Her little room in Bagatelle was Mabel’s final classroom. In it Mabel held court, discussed words and verses, and taught, for to the very end she was a teacher.

The icing on the cake was unquestionably the award of an MBE in June 2008. However, owing to her health she was unable to go to London to collect her medal. But on April 21, 2009, the Lord Lieutenant of Renfrewshire, Guy Clark, invested her at Bagatelle on behalf of the Queen.

The Burns Federation and, in particular, Greenock Burns Club are much the poorer of her death but those same organisations and countless individuals are so much the richer from her having passed this way.

Teacher;

Born January 31, 1916;

Died November 30, 2009.