A biography of Kavanagh, written by someone called Antoinette Quinn, has just been published. It spends an entire chapter giving the backround to this poem. Here's my summary ...

Basically, in 1945, Kavanagh became obsessed with a woman named Hilda Moriarty. He was in his forties, she was in her early twenties. He was a struggling journalist/poet, and she was a student in Trinity College in Dublin. She came from a well off family in Kerry. They seem to have struck up some kind of relationship, but perhaps not a romantic one from her point of view. She was certainly impressed with his poetry. The book makes the point that she made a big effort to help Kavanagh. For example, she used contacts to try to get work for him (without much success). She also tried to improve his personal hygiene problem (again without success)! Kavanagh's obsession with Hilda was so strong that he even took to following her when she was going out on dates with other men. At Christmas in 1945, he abandoned his normal routine of spending the holiday period with his ageing mother in Monaghan, and followed Hilda to her home town in Kerry. Ultimately, by the time Raglan Road (Dark hairded Myriam ...) was written in 1946, it had dawned on Kavanagh that nothing was going to come of the relationship. When the poem was first published, Kavanagh used the name (Myriam) of the girlfriend of a friend of his as an attempt to disguise the real object of his affections.

Apparently, Kavanagh's American published declined the poem on the basis that it contained some substandard lines in the last two verses. The writer of the biography agrees with this assessment, and states that Kavanagh wrote a number of superior poems about Hilda. In my opinion, some poetry really comes into its own when put to music. For example, the work of Cicely Fox Smith (which has been discussed elsewhere in the forum) was never very highly regarded until people started writing tunes to go along with her words. In the case of Raglan Road, it happens to have one of the best tunes in 'The Dawning of the Day'. Kavanagh can be given some credit here, as he wrote the poem specifically for this tune.

Regards, Stephen