Cover

THE OVER THE BRIDGE CONTROVERSY, 1959 93 spective oVered by Boyd’s play was directly and blatantly opposed to that of the communities which the play claimed to represent. To that extent, then, The Flats oVered not a realistic portrayal of a nationalist community in Belfast but rather a sentimental eVacement of that community’s political choices. Moreover, the sentimentality of Boyd’s narrative— most conspicuous perhaps in the factitious stylization of the play’s concluding tableau—implies the opposite to what Boyd’s play intended: not the ease with which sectarian divisions might be transcended in the name of a universal humanity, but, rather, the recalcitrance of local conditions in the face of traditional forms of representation. In the eleven years since the Wrst performance of Over the Bridge, the political and theatrical climate under Stormont had changed irrevocably. —University College, Galway COVER Like the previous three covers in this thirtieth volume of ÉIRE-IRELAND (1995), this last issue’s cover is taken from Treasures from the National Library of Ireland (1994). Edited by Noel Kissane, and distributed in the United States by Syracuse University Press, Treasures from the National Library of Ireland offers a wealth of plates sampling the library’s very rich holdings and serves, perforce, as a guide to the library’s holdings. From the ninth section of this book representing the cartographical collection—based on twenty thousand maps in the Royal Dublin Society and Joly libraries—we present Richard Bartlett’s unfinished bird’s-eye view of Armagh (top) and of a new fort on the River Blackwater (bottom) circa July, 1601. Bartlett accompanied Mountjoy against Hugh O’Neill in the campaign of 1600–1603. The rectangular thatched houses in the fort are of English design, while the circular thatched houses in Armagh are of Irish design. The chief buildings of the town are roofless, while the cathedral on the hill is sorely damaged. Bartlett here contrasts the “scorched earth” tactics of O’Neill, who burned the town in 1600 to keep it out of Mountjoy’s hands, with the “modern” and constructive efforts of the English settlers. Consequently, like other pictorial documents of the time such as Derricke’s Vieue of Woodkarne (1581), Bartlett’s birds-eye view has the character of a political cartoon. At the very top of the map, just to the right of the old road west from Armagh, Bartlett depicts Emain Macha or Navan Fort.We thank the staff of the National Library of Ireland and particularly Dr. Patricia Donlon, its director, for permission to reproduce these plates. ...