Sir, – Deaglán de Bréadún'sIrishman's Diary of August 27th mentions several noted former attendees at the annual Yeats International Summer School in Sligo.
Another was the Democratic United States senator and presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, who was also a noted poet with a prodigious memory and a mischievous sense of humour.
He told me once, how, when he was invited to the Yeats summer school, he reckoned there would be recitals after hours, “so I decided to memorise something most of them wouldn’t have done, and when they finished with Easter 1916 and The Second Coming, I’d say, well now, anybody here know The Wanderings of Oisin?” – Yours, etc,
CONOR O’CLERY,
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Stepaside,
Co Dublin