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Modern Ireland (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)

“Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone/ It’s with O’Leary in the grave.” The words are by William Butler Yeats, and like much of his poetry they are memorable but not quite accurate. Romantic Ireland, the Ireland of myth and imagination, whether literary, sentimental, or political, is far from dead or in its grave: Indeed, it seems to be the only Ireland with real substance. The enduring fact of Irish history is the supremacy of perception over reality, the stubborn persistence of desire over mundane fact. From the late Elizabethan rebellions of the 1600’s through the sectarian...

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