wartime censorship imposed by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera was having upon Irish literature. In a review for The Guardian of Ciarán Carson's 2006 translation of Cúirt an Mheán Óiche, David Wheately wrote, "When it came to translating Merriman's poem, the temptation might have been to put its four-stressed lines into Swiftian octosyllabics, but instead he has opted for the hop, step and jump of an anapestic beat. According to Carson's introduction, however, his real inspiration was the 6/8 rhythm of Irish jigs, which as a fiddler himself Merriman would have known well. ... The alphabet soup of earlier Carson books such as First Language serves him well here with the alliterative riffing of the Gaelic metre (befuddled and boozed in a bibulous Babel)... For all its problems with the censor, Frank O'Connor's version is the drawing room performance; this one's for the shebeen in the wee small hours." In an article about his own translation of Merriman's poem, Ciaran Carson wrote, "On the morning of New Year's Day 2005 – the year of the 200th anniversary of Merriman's death – I dreamed about Merriman. I was wandering on a dark hillside when I saw a light in the distance. I followed it, and came to a little house. The door was ajar; timidly, I pushed it open. Merriman was sitting by the hearth, wearing a greatcoat. He gestured at me to sit down. I did so, and we conversed. True, he did most of the talking, but I was fully able to follow the flow of his intricate Irish. I cannot remember what was said. When I awoke, I was disappointed to find my Irish restored to its former poverty. But I felt that I had been touched, just a little, by the hand of the Master." Legacy in County Clare Cumann Merriman was founded in 1967 to promote the poet's work. They run an annual Merriman Summer School in County Clare each August. In 2005, the Clare County Library released a CD recording of a local seanchaí reciting Cúirt an Mheán Óiche in the traditional oral manner. Although it has not been made available for purchase, Cumann Merriman has posted excerpts on their website. For added contrast, the same passages are also reproduced from a modern dramatic reading of the poem. At the end of a 1993 lecture on Merriman's life and work, Seamus Heaney declared, "Perhaps I can