ABSTRACT
Date of revision. This revision is probably from the first half of 1902, though it may be earlier. WBY wrote to AG on 6 Jan. 1903 about plans for the Dun Emer ISW (CL 3, 298–299): ‘My sister's book is merely a specially beautiful and expensive first edition of certain of my best things’; with ‘the lyrics in my sister's book,’ the letter went on, WBY intended to ‘put the Cathleen ni Hoolihan poem’. While there is a possibility that he is thinking of ‘Yellow Haired Donough’, a poem from the play that was briefly intended also for ISW, it is likely that WBY refers here to this revised version of the Hanrahan verses, which AG must have seen, possibly when WBY stayed at Coole through the busy summer of 1902. Earlier dates are also possible, but it is probable that WBY's renewed interest in the verses was bound up with his interest in the figure of Cathleen herself as the quasi-mythic focus of his and AG's Cathleen ni Houlihan, written by autumn 1901 and first performed, with MG in the title role, in Apr. 1902.
