Madam, - John A. Murphy (June 12th) has opened an interesting debate about de Valera's celebrated 1943 broadcast and what exactly he said.
There is a recurring controversy where some argue that de Valera never referred to "comely maidens". In 1994 one of your letter-writers invited me to contribute to your pages with the gist of what I had broadcast on my archives programme on RTÉ Radio 1 on this subject. Were de Valera's maidens "happy" or "comely"? The answer is not simple: I think it fair to say that both are correct.
In the broadcast reproduced on RTÉ's centenary record, Eamon de Valera: his recorded voice, de Valera refers to "the laughter of happy maidens". But Maurice Moynihan, in his excellently annotated Speeches and Statements of Eamon de Valera (Dublin, 1980, pp. 466-9), quotes "comely" not "happy"; and he gives as his source a typescript from the Department of the Taoiseach. RTÉ's source for its archive recording is an HMV 78rpm record, which is not necessarily a recording of the original broadcast.
It seems probable to me that de Valera's preference was for "comely", which was in the draft script, was probably what he said in the original Radio Eireann broadcast, and now survives in Moynihan's book, but that for the HMV recording he was advised to substitute "happy" for "comely", possibly with American listeners in mind. "Comely"was used in American English but was probably thought to be a bit old-fashioned.
Is there anybody out there who can remember hearing the original broadcast? - Yours, etc,
JOHN BOWMAN, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.