All went well until the castle monkey swept up the tiny Earl, the Countess screamed in fright, and the Earl disappeared forever. From the Marianne Moore Newsletter Vol. Then they are to me like enchanted Earl Gerald who changed himself into a stag, to a great green-eyed cat of the mountain. Copyright 1986 by U of Texas Press. Yet the speaker knows Ireland only through reading and myth.
Every name is a tune.
Moreover, she implies that even this heritage may be a mixed blessing. As racial portrait, this is myth-making par excellence. Moore's knowledge of earlier extreme discrimination against the Irish in the United States may contribute to her strong allegiance to that part of her heritage, but it does not enter the poem. Instead, she identifies her speaker with a country of garrulously cantankerous individuals who live a life of antithesis to the rational materialism and selfishness characterizing the United States. Copyright 1995 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.