A classic essay on the use of ethnic nationalism and nativism in the decades between Parnell’s death and the Good Friday agreement, this reflection on the Irish use of concepts such as race, nation, and territory in Irish literature and cultural memory (evinced by Thomas Davis, Matthew Arnold, Yeats, and Pearse) remains topical. The sense of an Irish cultural ancestry remains an artistic and intellectual challenge, as it was for Yeats, and as such one can commit to it.