A chara, – It is true that Pearse was critical of The Playboy of the Western World in An Claidheamh Solais (An Irishman's Diaruy, April 16th).
However, Pearse wrote in 1913, "When a man like Synge, in whose heart there glowed a real love of Ireland, one of the two or three men who have in our time made Ireland considerable in the eyes of the world, uses strange symbols which we do not understand, we cry out that he has blasphemed and we proceed to crucify him."
Synge has won an honoured place in the esteem of Aran Islanders. The Teach Synge museum on Inis Meáin is a national treasure. Máirtín Ó Direáin in his poem of homage to Synge noted that the words that Synge collected on the island, and spoken by Deirdre, Naoise, Pegeen and Shawneen, would live forever in an alien tongue. I remember well a wonderful Luganda version of The Playboy in Kampala. Dara Ó Conaola wrote a long poem "Ag Caint le Synge" with his own translation and accompanying CD just a few months ago. Synge lives! – Yours, etc,
PEADAR Mac MÁGHNAIS,
Baile Átha Cliath 5.