This chapter takes as its prompt two propositions. The first of these is from Edna Longley's ambition enunciated in a programmatic statement of intent in the Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies. There, she asserted that the aim of that volume was to provide ‘alternative narratives’ in which Irish and Scottish comparisons might complicate the traditional rubric of literary analysis. She made plain that ‘comparison is about difference, about distinctiveness as well as identity’. ‘Has Scottish or Irish exceptionalism been the enemy of Scottish or Irish particularism,’ she enquired, positing the possibility that ‘perhaps latterday identity politics and multiculturalism have actually re-inscribed habits of national segregation’. This opened up one anxiety about the capacity to conduct Irish–Scottish studies at all.

The second prompt came from Peter Mackay's article in the next issue of the same journal in which he traversed the contentious contours of the border between cultures. His exploration of the vexatious and controversial nature of literary translation provided a valuable metaphor for precisely the challenge that Longley had laid down. If Irish–Scottish studies is to be of value it must be capable of translating the experience of one culture into that of another and overcoming the national segregation against which Longley rails.