Volume 53, Number 17 · November 2, 2006
Edwin Muir's Field
By David Wheatley
In response to In the Luminous Deep
(July 13, 2006)
To the Editors:
It is not only in Robin Robertson's work that John Banville [NYR, July 13] should seek for an explanation of his title A Painted Field: the phrase originates in Edwin Muir's poem "Scotland 1941" ("We were a tribe, a family, a people./Wallace and Bruce guard now a painted field...").
David Wheatley
Hull, England