Sir, – Not only does Adam and Eve's Church appear in the opening of Finnegans Wake, as Frank McNally writes (An Irishman's Diary, September 14th), but its foundations contain a clue to a journalistic rift.
The church was built over, and obliterated, Rosemary Lane, which ran from Merchant’s Quay to Cook Street.
When Niall Montgomery, friend and collaborator of Myles na Gopaleen, was given his own column in The Irish Times, he chose "Rosemary Lane" as his pseudonym.
When the Fates, or a mischievous sub-editor, placed Niall’s piece next to Myles’s Cruiskeen Lawn, a columnar turf war was triggered in which Myles was the victor.
Shortly afterwards, Rosemary Lane, like her antecedent alley, was quietly buried. – Yours, etc,
Dr JOHN DOHERTY,
Gaoth Dobhair,
Co Dhún na nGall.