A chara, - While it is a matter for good Christians to decide whether to enjoy or to refrains from theatrical entertainment on Good Friday, I feel obliged to reply to Canon Robert MacCarthy's insinuations regarding The Midnight Court as, reported in The Irish Times (March 29th). There is nothing in Merriman's original poem, Cuirt an Mheonoiche (c. 1780), that warrants its being characterised as un Christian. Similarly, the translation cum adaptation of the poem, if it is the same as that staged in Cork some years ago, is a light hearted and quite innocuous production.
The type of criticism that Canon MacCarthy voices seems to have been the preserve of the more obscurantist members of the Catholic clergy in former times. However, it is unlikely that Canon MacCarthy's comments will encourage other clergymen of his denomination to raise up again against literature the tattered standard of narrow minded censoriousness abandoned so discreetly, almost silently, by the Catholic Church. One is encouraged by the willingness of the many members of the Church of Ireland to read in an open minded and independently minded fashion Irish literature in the original and, vis a vis Canon MacCarthy's anxiety, by reference to the best translation of Merriman's Cuirt, that of the late Canon Cosslett Quin, published by The Mercier Press in 1982. - Le hurraim,
Department of Modern Irish, University College,
Cork.