For the greatest single irony of An Béal Bocht lies in its dedication to R. M. Smyllie, the magisterial editor of The Irish Times and official mouthpiece of the ascendancy. In the dedication, his name is tampered with, in just the same way that his Victorian compatriots had mangled the spelling of Myles: thus R. M. Smyllie is transformed to “R. M. У Smaoille”, and thence to the clan-leader “An Smaolach”. The only Irish known to Smyllie was whiskey, which he drank from a hand covered in a white glove, a consequence of a promise to his mother on her death-bed that he would “never touch a drop again”. Of the native language he knew not a word. Despite repeated entreaties to the uncharacteristically tight-lipped author, Smyllie never managed to ascertain the nature of the book, nor the reason for its dedication. He must, on occasion, have suspected that, despite the elaborate leg-pull, the author was in earnest. For, in dedicating his study of Irish identity to an Anglo-Irishman who could never hope to read it, O’Nolan had pointed to a central theme of his book – the tragicomedy of mistaken identity that lay behind the manufacture in Britain of the stage Irishman.

Declan Kiberd: Flann O’Brien, Myles and The Poor Mouth

from Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation, London 1996, 497—512.

(the book was published in 1941, but not translated until 1973)