"I must have been sixteen or so when, in whatever anthology of French verse we were studying at my Belfast grammar school, I came upon Vigny's line, 'Dieu, que le son du cor est triste au fond des bois!' and it has remained with me ever since, like the refrain of Yeats's 'The Stolen Child', its echo reverberating down the years."
Derek Mahon, introduction to The Hunt by Night (1982).
