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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Ella Creamer

‘Only the great writers are misquoted’: Dublin marathon medal has wrong Yeats quote

‘No evidence he wrote those words’ … Irish Life Dublin marathon medal 2023.
‘No evidence he wrote those words’ … Irish Life Dublin marathon medal 2023. Photograph: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Participants in next month’s Dublin marathon are due to receive a medal engraved with a quote attributed to WB Yeats, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Irish poet receiving the Nobel prize in literature. However, there is no record of the quote in question having been written by Yeats.

“There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t met yet” is written along the bottom of the medals, below a portrait of the poet. However, there is “no evidence of any kind” that Yeats wrote those words “either in his numerous articles, essays or book reviews, or in his almost 400 poems and 23 plays”, Yeats Society Sligo director Susan O’Keeffe told the Guardian.

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