Sir, – Diarmaid Ferriter’s recent article “Sinn Féin’s difficulties should not make Fine Gael complacent” (Opinion & Analysis, October 18th), in which he cited Kevin O’Higgins’s memorable phrase involving “wild men screaming through the keyholes”, reminded me of some minor research I carried out a few years ago concerning the origin of this phrase. I discovered that two years before his appearance at Oxford University in October 1924, O’Higgins addressed a large pro-Treaty meeting in College Green in Dublin in March 1922 where he told the assembled gathering that “he was one of the eight national apostates of the City Hall who had been trying to do their best for the Irish nation while wild men screamed through the keyholes”. Further investigation revealed that no less a figure than David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, had also used the phrase when he was describing the conditions under which the Paris Peace Conference worked when he addressed parliament in April 1919: “I am doubtful whether any body of men with a difficult task have worked under greater difficulties – stones clattering on the roof, and crashing through the windows, and sometimes wild men screaming through the keyholes.” And there the trail ended, for me at any rate, for I could find no earlier use of this memorable phrase. It does, however, make one wonder whether O’Higgins had been aware of its prior use by Lloyd George. – Yours, etc,
FRANK BOUCHIER-HAYES,
Newcastle West,
Co Limerick.