The recent four-day visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland – the first by a reigning monarch in a hundred years – was a stunning triumph, capped by the five-minute standing ovation she received at a musical performance on her final night in the Irish capital. That performance included excerpts from Riverdance, which the Queen appeared to hugely enjoy. Bill Whelan, the composer of Riverdance, was also commissioned to write a march for an Irish military band for the arrival of the Queen at Dublin Airport. The title of this piece, “The Walk of a Queen,” carried a hidden meaning, for it was taken from the famous closing line to Yeats’s revolutionary play, Cathleen ni Houlihan, first produced in 1902.