from the aforementioned 'Dublin Pub Life & Lore', the barman at McDaids for forty years or so, Paddy O'Brien, has this to say:

"I was very fond of Paddy Kavanagh. People would say he was an old grouch, but he was anything but. He was a very alive, simple-minded man. And a genius. I didn't realise it at the time. No, I just saw him as a country man. But behind all that you had all this beautiful stuff. Do you know this poem 'Raglan Road'? Well, he wrote that for a woman. Her husband at the time was Minister for Education and his wife was a tall raven-haired lady and Kavanagh fell in love with her. And that ballad, 'Raglan Road', is to her. Now when you read that it's so full of passion and so full of Kavanagh. And I'd say to meself, 'Jesus, how the hell could he flow out with that sort of stuff?', the man that was always in here telling jokes and this sort of stuff...."