Madam, - Hugh Oram (An Irishman's Diary, June 9th) describes the various recordings housed in the Howth radio museum, among them "Eamon de Valera's famous 1943 speech about the comely maidens at the crossroads".
In fact, there is no mention whatever of crossroads, or maidens dancing there, in this or any other de Valera speech.
I have pointed out this over the years, but I might as well have been talking to the wall for all the effect I had on shifting an entrenched journalistic myth. - Yours, etc,
JOHN A. MURPHY, Rosebank, Douglas Road, Cork.
