Nótaí na nEagarthóirí: Editors' Notes

Our issue opens at midnight in Donegal on the Feast of St. Colm Cille's death. There, anthropologist Dr. E. Moore Quinn, as participant-observer, follows the annual performance of An Turas Cholm Cille, a pilgrimage of fifteen stations traditionally associated with the sixth-century saint. Walking us along the route widely thought to be the oldest continuing pilgrimage in Ireland, Quinn also takes us through some anthropological theories, folklore studies, oral traditions, and local interpretations that seek to understand both the local event and the phenomenon of pilgrimage itself. Quinn finds Fiona Bowie's ideas on the "typology of place" and the allegorical nature of pilgrimage especially helpful; yet, as we journey with Quinn and several dozen others, we sense that these analyses take us only so far, for the experience itself is essential to its meaning. E. Moore Quinn is the author of Irish-American Folklore in New England (2009) and of articles in Irish Studies Review, Éire-Ireland, and Anthropological Quarterly.

When the Irish economy tumbled in 2008, everyone—elected officials, opinion leaders, and the general public—found themselves in the midst of what was quite literally a crash course in Economics. As Dr. Timothy White notes, substantial scholarship and popular history has emerged to explain the sudden downturn, and some facts are clear—notably, that the roots of the crisis lie in an overheated construction industry and a corrupt and reckless financial sector. Less clear to White are the reasons that commentators find so little to hope for in the Irish economy. While admitting the deep pain and far-reaching consequences of the crash, he argues that the Irish economy has been fundamentally transformed: many of the policies that brought the affluence of the Tiger years may yet provide a basis for future prosperity. Timothy White is the author of numerous articles on Irish politics, which have appeared in Irish Studies journals as well as such places as The European Legacy, Peace Review, and International Studies Perspectives.

In Tom French's "The Delivery Room," the last in a suite of eight new poems from the Meath-based poet, we find him opening a window just after the birth of his son—and seeing there a cemetery, with "row upon row of neat marble and granite / the only sound, a car on the Bridge of Peace / and an ambulance engine ticking over in A&E." Loss and human fragility are familiar themes in French's work, as in the poems here that give us a charged memory of the poet Michael Donaghy, and a translation of the Gaelic poet Séamus Dall Mac Cuarta's "Last Words." But so, too, are moments when ordinary life abuts the numinous: the afterlife of a young lover's gesture in "A Plum Tree," the holy madness of Antonin Artaud, and the odd braiding of time and memory while walking grounds of a hospital. Tom French's collections are Touching the Bones (2001) and The Fire Step (2009), both from the Gallery Press.

The author of two books on the Irish Revolution,Women of the Dail: Gender, Republicanism and the Anglo-Irish Treaty (2006) and Imagining Ireland's Independence: The Debates over the Anglo-Irish Treaty (2006), Dr. Jason Knirck is currently working on a book-length study of Cumann na nGaedheal. In this issue, he opens a window on the thinking and the actions of two key figures of that party, Kevin O'Higgins and W. T. Cosgrave. Their decisions to support the Anglo-Irish Treaty would define their future careers, and of course, the Treaty's ratification by the Dáil that they facilitated led in short order to the Irish Civil War. In the seldom temperate realm of Irish political rhetoric, both men found themselves charged with opportunism, with insufficient zeal for the revolution, and at times, with treachery. Knirck reminds us that both men began as firm republicans; over time, their pragmatic decisions to support the Treaty became entrenched Cumann na nGaedheal ideology.

Notwithstanding the building boom and ease with which holiday-makers can come and go, the West of Ireland still offers the prospect of "unspoiled...