Sir, - Ulick O'Connor is an esteemed colleague whom I have always greatly admired and would never wish to take issue with. Therefore I am happy to say that I fully concur with almost everything he says in his letter (November 28th) concerning the origins of the poem which inspired the title of my novel, The Valparaiso Voyage.
An Long is indeed a translation by Padraig de Br·n of a poem by Oliver St John Gogarty and Ulick is absolutely correct that I should have credited this fact and indeed that de Br·n himself might have been more generous in acknowledging his own debt to this gifted and neglected lyric poet. As Ulick is an authority on Gogarty (I refer readers to his acclaimed biography of him) his explanation about these two friends being on different sides of the political divide seems highly credible.
In truth, however, I was aware of this fact before writing my article in The Irish Times Magazine (November 24th) - indeed de Br·n's generous literary executor was keen to point it out. But my reasons for crediting de Br·n with the words I learnt was that it was his marvellous version in Irish we encountered in school. We learnt it as an original poem and the fact that it was in Irish (and different from everything else we learnt in Irish) made it all the more alluring and mysterious.
My short piece was about my first encounter with poetry as a child and I did not want to bring too much adult knowledge to my recreation of a childhood experience.
Theo Dorgan's version is indeed unusual (but not unique) in being a translation of a translation - and here I would beg a divergence of opinion with Ulick. Firstly, I think the version is a fine piece of work; and secondly it was not "provided" to the world by myself but instead by that august organ, The Irish Times - in its recent book of a hundred favourite poems as chosen by readers, where An Long makes its appearance (like in our schoolbooks) as an original poem in its own right.
Very occasionally (and rather unfairly) a translation can become more famous than the original poem, which is the case more recently with Paul Muldoon's poem The Mirror - actually a translation of Michael Davitt's very fine An Scathβn - as literature from our two languages continues to cross-fertilise with interesting results.
Ulick is utterly correct that I should have found the space to mention the original poem by Gogarty and subsequently I do indeed have egg on my face.
One advantage of a large beard, however, is that I am frequently carry around not just the remnants of an egg but of a full Irish breakfast concealed within its folds in case hunger strikes at an inopportune moment. - Yours, etc.,
Dermot Bolger, Ferguson Road, Dublin 9.