Irish Diaspora material culture

1Ν "The Fourth Separatism" {Canadian Literature 45), Ronald Sutherland discusses five recent works of Canadian fiction: Hubert Aquin's Prochain épisode (1965); Jacques Godbout's Le Couteau sur la table (1965); Claude Jasmin's Ethel et le terroriste (1964); Hugh MacLennan's Return of the Sphinx (1967) ; and Ellis Portal's Killing Ground ( 1968). Sutherland uses these works, all about some aspect of English-French relations in Canada, to analyze "four kinds of Quebec Separatism" and to argue that, "in the light of the psychological problems discussed in all the novels", a "special status" for Quebec "within a confederate system makes sense". "The Fourth Separatism" is, on the whole, an eloquent plea for the need to create "a genuine feeling of cultural security . . . once and for all in Quebec". Two issues Sutherland raises, however, need further comment. One is his definition of a "distinct...

In the beginning more than a century before AA was The Pledge. And The Pledge was between the problem drinker and God. In the early 19th century, a temperance wave swept the United States, and millions swore off alcohol by reciting one of several popular temperance oaths and going cold turkey. The act was "known, colloquially, as "Taking The Pledge." The Pledge arose out of a movement originally secular. In the late 1700s, Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia wrote pamphlets discouraging the consumption of "ardent spirits." Protestant ministers such as Lyman Beecher baptized these efforts. Though the crusade became something of a fad, it failed to arouse widespread interest among Catholics, who were perhaps suspicious of its Protestant associations. One exception was the Irish Temperance Society, which arose in Boston in 1835 and was open to both Catholics and Protestants. The movement spread from the States to the British Isles, and was there received into ful...

Automated census linkage algorithms have become popular for generating longitudinal data on social mobility, especially for immigrants and their children. But what if these algorithms are particularly bad at tracking immigrants? Using nineteenth-century Irish immigrants as a test case, we examine the most popular of these algorithms-that created by Abramitzky, Boustan, Eriksson (ABE), and their collaborators. Our findings raise serious questions about the quality of automated census links. False positives range from about one-third to one-half of all links depending on the ABE variant used. These bad links lead to sizeable estimation errors when measuring Irish immigrant social mobility.

Quilting, while often seen as a quintessentially American art form, has a long history throughout the world. Americans' exposure to other traditions has been intermittent, but reflects other trends in the study of ethnic arts. In the 1950s, interest in folk art overlapped with interest in ethnic art as both create an exotic "other" to readers. Before 1960, that "other" was primarily Hawaiian and European. The 1960s added Cuna molas, and the 1970s saw an explosion of interest in worldwide quilt traditions from Tibetan to Amish. This paper is a content analysis of quilting traditions referenced in magazine articles from 1900 to 1980. The article database was derived from the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature and the Art Index. These indexes provide a replicable source and describe national level magazines of (more or less) popular interest. I reviewed six categories in each index; any articles which included the techniques of applique, piecing, or quilting were included. I examined changes over time, types of magazines, the contexts where ethnic quilts were published, and the intersectionality of gender and ethnicity.

Boyd, G., & Ward, B. (2018). The Pope, the Park, and the City: Dublin, 1979, Republic of Ireland. In J. Browne, C. Frost, & R. Lucas (Eds.), Architecture, Festival and the City (1 ed., Vol. 14, pp. 191-202). (Critiques: Critical Studies in Architectural Humanities). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://www.routledge.com/Architecture-Festival-and-the-City/Browne-Frost-Lucas/p/book/9781138362345

This research paper, part of a larger PhD narrative inquiry explores attitudes to, and experiences of, Irish and Scottish Gaelic languages in Aotearoa/New Zealand. It applies Clandinin and Connelly’s three frames: time – past, present and future; place; and the intersection of the personal and the social, to the narratives of eight people with Scottish and Irish backgrounds. Using narrative inquiry and ethnography it presents stories that are resonant rather than generalizable, which illustrate that language is a contingent but still constitutive aspect of identity/ies.

This qualitative research explores how social relations and intersections of race, class, and gender are evident in the woman-centered space of quilting groups. Methods used are interviews with quilters and participant observation at quilt guild meetings and quilt shows in Northern California. Interviewees include both women and men from a variety of racial/ethnic groups. A cultural studies/popular culture approach is utilized, with concepts including cultural production, consumption, commodification, representation, appropriation, appreciation, hegemony and resistance. Elements from post-colonial and multicultural/multiracial feminist thought as well as critical whiteness studies are also integrated. Results show that quilters expressed shared values about quilting and the place of quilting in their lives as well as the place of quilting in our society. However, differences by race/ethnicity are evident in quilters' choice of quilting-related social activities and membership in quilting groups. Complex dynamics of the interplay of aesthetics and race/ethnicity are also present. Quilters' social location is reflected in their cultural production and choice of social activity around quilting.

This qualitative research explores how social relations and intersections of race, class, and gender are evident in the woman-centered space of quilting groups. Methods used are interviews with quilters and participant observation at quilt guild meetings and quilt shows in Northern California. Interviewees include both women and men from a variety of racial/ethnic groups. A cultural studies/popular culture approach is utilized, with concepts including cultural production, consumption, commodification, representation, appropriation, appreciation, hegemony and resistance. Elements from post-colonial and multicultural/multiracial feminist thought as well as critical whiteness studies are also integrated. Results show that quilters expressed shared values about quilting and the place of quilting in their lives as well as the place of quilting in our society. However, differences by race/ethnicity are evident in quilters' choice of quilting-related social activities and membership in quilting groups. Complex dynamics of the interplay of aesthetics and race/ethnicity are also present. Quilters' social location is reflected in their cultural production and choice of social activity around quilting.

This thesis explores the autonomous actions of amateurs through communal making activities, with a particular focus on quilting as a form of textile craft. As a participant observer in a longitudinal case study, I was able to be in part, assimilated into the communal voice and practice of the Meltham Quilting Bee. As a result, this research considers the actions and choices we make when we have opportunities of individual autonomy through creative practice and an understanding of how this adapts when the making of work is a shared and social experience. Patchwork has not only been used to piece together the quilts and numerous bodies of research in this study it has also acted as a concept to bring together a multitude of voices for communal and group making. Two key practices make up this thesis. Firstly, a longitudinal case study started in the early months of this work and six years later, is still running as a small quilting bee. Secondly, my personal creative practice has playe...

R ushie and Stella live within twenty-five miles of each other on the same state highway in Southwest Arkansas, Rruhie, 75, lives in a small town (with a population between Jifty and one •' hlllldred, it really is more like "a widenin' in the road"), while Stella, 70, lives in a more i~olated, rural location, in a small house just off the main highway. Both women quilt, and have done so for over fifty years, producing hlUJdreds of quilts during this time; Stella's husband esti '! mated that she has produced well over five hundred quilts. Both women often employ similar patchwork patterns (such as the Double Wedding Riup;, Granwnotheis Flower Garde••. and the Lone or Broken Star), both use a frame to quilt the pieced work, and both have been forced to modify the use of materials commonly used in the pa~t such as cotton fabric and batting because of increasing unavailability. Yet here the resemblance between the two women, living SQ clo.e to each other and yet unaware of each other's el!istence, becomes more tenuous. What follows is an attempt to examine the differences as well as the simila. rities between them, and to illustrate the hazards and inaccura cie~ of assuming Lhal the objects that people create, and lhe ways in which they create them, are static and t,uJturally-bound to a norm ton ceived of by the researcher. Hopefully, from this study an analysis will emerge that may more accurately characterize a "folk art" and ''folk artists" of this kind. Rushie was horn in Arkansas, her father i~ from North Carolina, and her mother's family was from Mississippi and can be traced back at least as far as slavery days. She grew up with a ''big bunch" of brothers and si.slers, as well '"' with her mother's "a/1\ided sister" and her grand mother. Her fathe~ was a railroad worker, but was often out of work, especially during the depression times. She attended school through ; 'M~• sincer~ thanks to Snrn Hernande'l'. for both ht< illustmtion• and his "'wourage meut.

This research paper, part of a larger PhD narrative inquiry explores attitudes to, and experiences of, Irish and Scottish Gaelic languages in Aotearoa/New Zealand. It applies Clandinin and Connelly’s three frames: time – past, present and future; place; and the intersection of the personal and the social, to the narratives of eight people with Scottish and Irish backgrounds. Using narrative inquiry and ethnography it presents stories that are resonant rather than generalizable, which illustrate that language is a contingent but still constitutive aspect of identity/ies.

This research paper, part of a larger PhD narrative inquiry explores attitudes to, and experiences of, Irish and Scottish Gaelic languages in Aotearoa/New Zealand. It applies Clandinin and Connelly’s three frames: time – past, present and future; place; and the intersection of the personal and the social, to the narratives of eight people with Scottish and Irish backgrounds. Using narrative inquiry and ethnography it presents stories that are resonant rather than generalizable, which illustrate that language is a contingent but still constitutive aspect of identity/ies.

Joseph O&#39;Connor&#39;s Star of the Sea (2002) offers a nuanced depiction of the lifelong patterns of resistance of the Irish governess and Famine survivor, Mary Duane. Following Gayatri Spivak&#39;s notions of the Other and of &#39;wordling&#39; - the practice of the more powerful who seize their impressions of the experiences of those perceived as weaker to elevate themselves to &quot;Sovereign Selves&quot; – this essay charts the intersections of power and the production of meaning and knowledge and argues that Star of the Sea is a feminist excavation of strategies of diasporic strength. O&#39;Connor&#39;s heroine is not a victimized female Other who can merely report; she is not permanently elusive and powerless, rather she is gradually revealed as a resourceful and inspirational character who relies on the idea of a noble Irish homeland which she adapts to navigate moral dilemmas, trauma and chaotic borders.

In the summer of 2010, my husband, sons, and I visited the Irish National Heritage Park (INHP) in county Wexford. As we strolled along wooded trails, we traveled through the 9,000 years of replicated history and material culture that had been promised in the advertisements: "From campsite to Ringfort, from mill to Fulacht Fiadh, from Crannog to Viking house, every activity is an unexpected adventure." The park includes sixteen life-sized "authentic recreation[s] of Ireland's heritage," allowing visitors to experience the entire timeline in a single-day's journey. 1 Beyond the Bronze Age megalithic tombs and ringfort, we came upon the medieval monastery, which is part of the hybrid "Celtic/Early Christian" sector of the park. Within a circular enclosure, the monastery houses several stone buildings including a church, monk's cell, scriptorium, and refectory. The buildings and a small garden are arranged concentrically around a plaster cast of a carved stone cross, decorated with relief carvings and brightly painted. The cross is a near-perfect replica of the granite North Cross at Castledermot, county Kildare, which is commonly dated to the ninth century. 2 The original monument stands in the cemetery to the north of the town's Protestant church, and no traces of paint survive on its carved faces. At the Heritage Park, however, the Castledermot cross is resurrectedand given a facelift (see figure 4.1). In the mid-1990s, when the park's management was conducting an upgrade, they added the cast, which is similar to the ones at Clonmacnoise. 3

One of the changes that compose history is the migration of peoples. The human drama of development of colossal numbers from one geographical area to another, and their first acquaintance with other social and economic backgrounds is a major source of change in the human state. For at least two centuries long before the great stream of the HungryForties, Irish immigrants had been making their way to the New World. Yet, the tragedy of the Great Famine is still seen as the greatest turning point of Irish history for the future of Ireland was forever changed by it and its people are still living its wake. The paper examines the experiences of the Irish people who immigrated to America as a result of the Potato Famine during the years 1845-1851. Once surviving the journey across the Atlantic, many of the Irish immigrants chose to stay in Eastern cities that had been established for hundreds of years. I focus on New York City as it was the place where many groups sought refuge and new opportunities. In so doing, they faced not only the challenge of assimilating in to American culture but also overcoming racial prejudice. The determination of the Irish to not only survive the Famine in Ireland, but to succeed in America is the eventual underlying theme of this paper.

One of the changes that compose history is the migration of peoples. The human drama of development of colossal numbers from one geographical area to another, and their first acquaintance with other social and economic backgrounds is a major source of change in the human state. For at least two centuries long before the great stream of the Hungry Forties, Irish immigrants had been making their way to the New World. Yet, the tragedy of the Great Famine is still seen as the greatest turning point of Irish history for the future of Ireland was forever changed by it and its people are still living its wake.
This thesis explores the conception of emigration and how it steadily became “a predominant way of life” in Ireland, so pervasive and integral to Irish life that it had affected the broad context of both Irish and American histories simultaneously. From the post-colonial perspective, my study presents emigration as one of the greatest emotional issues in Irish history, as it tends to have a very negative image especially in the post-Famine era. People are generally seen as involuntary “exiles”, compelled to leave Ireland by “British tyranny” and “landlord oppression” - an idealized Ireland where everyone was happy and gay and where roses grew around the door of the little white-washed cottage.
My study further examines the experiences of the Irish people who immigrated to America as a result of the Potato Famine during the years 1845-1851. Once surviving the journey across the Atlantic, many of the Irish immigrants chose to stay in Eastern cities that had been established for hundred of years. Chapter Two adopts New York City as a place where many groups sought refuge and new opportunities. In so doing, they faced not only the challenge of assimilating into American culture but also overcoming racial prejudice. The determination of the Irish to not only survive the Famine in Ireland, but to succeed in America is the eventual underlying theme of my study.

One of the changes that compose history is the migration of peoples. The human development of colossal numbers from one geographical area to another and their first contact with other social and economic backgrounds is a major source of change in the human state. For at least two centuries long before the great brook of the Hungry Forties, Irish immigrants had been making their way to the New World. Yet, the tragedy of the Great Famine is still seen as the greatest turning point of Irish history for the future of Ireland was forever changed. The paper tends to explore the conception of emigration and how it steadily became “a predominant way of life” in Ireland, so pervasive and integral to Irish life that it had affected the broad context of both Irish and American histories simultaneously. From the post-colonial perspective, my study presents emigration as one of the greatest emotional issues in Irish history, as it tends to have a very negative image especially in the post-Famine...

The First Nations here and the Mid-Atlantic Algonquins I hail from, are coastal peoples shaped by geography, internal and external conflicts over land and natural resources, and the cresting of the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean, respectively. We are on opposite coasts of North America, but we share histories of colonization, resistance, survival and resilience. My Choptank and Nanticoke ancestors were at ground zero of English contact in the New World. Explorer Captain John Smith led his first voyage up the Chesapeake, from the Algonquian Chesepiooc meaning, "at a big river" or "great shellfish bay" with a crew of 14 from June 2 to July 21, 1608 between the Western and Eastern shores of Maryland. The Eastern Shore is a spit of land, the Delmarva Peninsula, which rises, barely, between the Chesapeake, the largest U.S. estuary, and the Atlantic Ocean. In his log, Capt. Smith wrote on June 3: "Encounter with Accowmack Indians meeting with a 'king' who is the "comeliest proper civil savage we countered." 1 At Choptank, located in greater Preston, my hometown, there is a state sign pronouncing the Choptank Indians are extinct. "Do you feel extinct?" I said once to my cousin, Glenn, as we stood a spear's throw from the banks of the Choptank River. "No," he said. We smiled. We know who we are because our maternal Grandmother Lula Annie Thomas Butler told us. Well, she told us who she was. "I'm Injun, and I can't help it," she proclaimed in her 95 th year. "I am." My daughter, Nicole Lys Caudell, was filming her great-great grandmother for her senior project, "Braided Roots: An Autobiographical Documentary about Racial Consciousness in Black, White and Red America," which won first prize in its category at Temple University's Diamond Film Festival. My grandmother was born May 17, 1909, the third-born child and eldest daughter of Walter Thomas (1877) and Harriet Emily Dyer Thomas (1880).

Two surviving late fourteenth-century quilted furnishings, The Tristan Quilt in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Coperta Guicciardini in the National Museum of the Bargello, Florence, depict scenes from a story in the early life of Tristan, one of King Arthur's knights. Both museums attribute the furnishings to a southern Italian atelier and link them to the Guicciardini family of Florence. 1 To date most research on the Tristan hangings ignores their origins, as if, like Athena from the head of Zeus, they burst complete. Yet the hangings represent centuries-long Italian adaptation to outside influences. This paper places the Tristan hangings in the midst of a quilting tradition that had integrated the customs, imagery, materials, legends and needlework techniques of other cultures. Production of the Tristan hangings occurred in the midst of continuing Italian appreciation for quilted chamber furnishings, many made of cotton and silk textiles imported from eastern Mediterranean ports, particularly that of Tripoli, in Syria. Moreover, the patron's commission for these hangings drew on Italian regard for one particular Arthurian hero, Sir Tristan, to make a political statement regarding contemporary regional disputes. 1 The Tristan Quilt, maker unknown, inv. #1391-1904. See http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O98183/the-tristanquilt-bedcover -unknown/ for more images and catalog notes. For a detailed study and images of the Coperta Guicciardini, maker unknown, inv 61, see Rosanna Caterina Proto Pisani et al., eds., The Guicciardini "Quilt":

As some contemporary US. women reach middle age, they develop interests in personal activities, filling time and space once occupied by family carework. As this occurs, women often also develop subjective careers in these new spaces-where they construct both the goals and measures of success, independent of mainstream definitions. In this interview st udy with 70 US. midlife women, I examine the process of developing a subjective career around amateur quilting practices. As women begin to self-identify as amateur quitters, they also begin to define success as it is important to them-learning to quilt, making connections with others who quilt, and maintaining kin ties through giving quilts to others. Consequently, women redefine the role of qUIlting from a leisure activity to a subjective career-for although quilting adheres to the prescriptions of traditional femininity, quilting also allows women to carve out time and space just for themselves and their chosen leisure pursuits.

This chapter focuses on a set of three wall hangings, known as the Odyssey Quilts, that are held in the Power-House Museum in Sydney, Australia.1 They present creative visual narratives—made up of appliqued quilting pieces—portraying their creators’ recollections of their experiences of childhood, wartime, and migration. The quilts are the work of ten Dutch women who immigrated to Australia after the Second World War: Gerada Baremans, Johanna Binkhorst, Yvonne Chapman, Ann Diecker, Anna Dijkman-Tetteroo, Ineke McIntosh-Eichholtz, Frances Larder, Vera Rado, Francis Widitz, and Vicky van der Ley. Five of them came from the Nether- lands (NL) and five from the Netherlands East Indies (NEI), now Indonesia.2 Draw- ing upon their family histories, as well as their personal memories and mementos, the women produced artists’ biographies as a resource for their collective endeav- our. These written narratives, along with photographs and other records that were aggregated into visual diaries, provide personal insights and stories that serve as a valuable contextual framework for interpreting the visual images embedded in the quilts. While the quilting pieces draw upon memories that are individual and personal, they communicate a larger story of post–Second World War migration to Australia, releasing, in condensed visual form, histories and contexts that the artists’ biographies present more expansively in words. In this chapter the visual diaries and supporting autobiographical material are used as an aid to the interpretation of the quilts as personal expressions whose relevance extends far beyond the individual stories they tell (Figures 1–3).

The stitched and quilted 'intimate textiles' artwork titled Áine was started pre-lockdown in January 2020 on a two-week residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Ireland. I wrote about the design:

"The spirals come from the Neolithic Tomb of Newgrange in Ireland where the midwinter sun penetrates the seventeen feet long chamber deep into the earth and illuminates a carved stone - this only happens on the winter solstice, and only 12 people are allowed on the site and in the chamber before dawn on 21 December. I was there on the 1996 solstice. I was 'bumped up' the incredibly long list by a lovely civil servant in Dublin who acknowledged that Northern Ireland was edging towards the end of the "Troubles" (in 1998) by telling me that "we need to help our brothers and sisters in the North". And so I got into that chamber long before dawn, and we silently watched a grey finger of light creep into the dark and lengthen until it tickled that inner stone. Spirals are female and zigzags are male. The materials are 'intimate textiles', worn on bodies and then discarded, so corsets, lingerie, nighties, bras, slips, suspenders for stockings, and my pricked finger added a drop of my blood... So, in here are my concerns: women, intimacy, sex, death, birth, Ireland and its conflicts, stains and blood, and of course an under-current of shame which goes alongside all the rest....

The practice of preaching parish missions became widespread in Ireland after Catholic Emancipation in 1829. The upsurge in devotional practices and the dramatic increase in Mass attendance in the late nineteenth century ensured an increasing demand for local missions and retreats. Diocesan priests were not always plentiful so there was a general dependence upon religious orders for preaching and for parish mission work. The collection includes records relating to missions and retreats preached by the Irish Capuchin friars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The collection also includes material relating to special temperance missions given by the friars in response to a call from the Irish Catholic hierarchy to undertake a nationwide total abstinence campaign in 1905. The missionary zeal of the friars ensured that their temperance work extended to almost every part of the country. From Falcarragh in north Donegal to Bantry in west Cork, and from Achill Island off the western seaboard to the urban centres of Dublin and Belfast, the Capuchins worked tirelessly on the temperance mission. Record series in the collection include lists of missions and retreats given by the Capuchins, mission accounts and commentaries, temperance and pledge-taking records, correspondence, publicity material, printed ephemera and newspaper reports on missions preached by the friars.

This chapter examines the evidence for the daily lives of children in Viking and Hiberno-Scandinavian Dublin. Research relating to Hiberno-Scandinavian children in the Irish archaeological record is still in its infancy, but the material from Dublin offers considerable potential (McAlister 2003; 2009). The themes of environment, socialisation and play are discussed in order to explore how children could create their own cultural worlds, which intersected with-but were also distinct from-the adult world (Lillehammer 1989; 2000). The material and cultural world of children can be traced through the study of the nature and distribution of objects that belonged to children, such as toys (Sofaer-Derevenski 1994; Baxter 2005). Toys are given both significance and meaning by the children who play with them, and, as Sally Crawford (2009, 57) has recently argued, 'given that children engaged with material culture in object play, it is imperative to identify their toys in the past if children's culture, and its relationship with adult culture, is to be understood'. Interaction between children and the adult world can also be examined through analysis of artefacts that represent labour production and socialisation. Finally, analysis of the range of artefacts buried with children allows for exploration of the ways in which childhood identity and experience were interrelated with other identities, such as class and gender. 'Finding' children in the archaeological record There is little doubt that traces of the lives of children can be found in the archaeological record, even if our capacity to identify them is, as yet, still somewhat limited. As Mizoguchi (2000, 141) has argued, 'talking about children in the milieu of archaeological discourse is currently as contentious as talking about gender used to be. This is predominantly because children are often deemed to be invisible, or difficult to recognize archaeologically … however it is simply not accurate to state that children cannot be seen in archaeological material'. Nevertheless, childhood is not widely studied by archaeologists (Park 2005, 53). There are a number of reasons why this has come about, but Hirschfeld (2002, 612) has argued that the lack of child-focused scholarship has been the result of a cultural mindset that overestimates the role of adults in cultural learning, and underestimates the contribution of children in cultural reproduction. He also states that there has traditionally been a lack of appreciation of 'the scope and force of children's culture, particularly in shaping adult culture'. Another reason why childhood studies have been sidelined in archaeology is the persistent belief that 'we already understand what childhood is all about' (Park 2005, 54). Park argues that this belief is unfounded: Ethnographic research demonstrates that childhood can be defined differently from culture to culture, and therefore the experience of being a child undoubtedly varies as well. And if synchronic variation is possible, then so of course is variation over time. Hence there is the need for an archaeology of childhood, in which at least one goal should be to explore how and why childhood varied (2005, 54).

A study of the ceramic assemblage recovered at the McHugh site provides information about the social and economic status of the McHugh family throughout the latter half of the 19th century, but is less informative about the ethnic identity of the family. Through an analysis of the McHugh ceramic assemblage I explore to what extent the family’s ethnic identity can be interpreted through the material culture they left behind. How discernable is the family’s Irish heritage based on the material remains of the late 19th century occupation period at the farmstead? The analysis sheds light on the relationship of the archaeological deposits to the McHugh’s Irish identity and the temporal variability of the manifestation of that ethnic identity during this period. While the analysis suggests that there is little material evidence of the McHugh’s ethnic identity in the archaeological record, the analysis provides a real world look at the intersection of ethnicity and materiality in the archaeological record.

This research paper, part of a larger PhD narrative inquiry explores attitudes to, and experiences of, Irish and Scottish Gaelic languages in Aotearoa/New Zealand. It applies Clandinin and Connelly’s three frames: time – past, present and future; place; and the intersection of the personal and the social, to the narratives of eight people with Scottish and Irish backgrounds. Using narrative inquiry and ethnography it presents stories that are resonant rather than generalizable, which illustrate that language is a contingent but still constitutive aspect of identity/ies.

This essay explores the meaning of the quilt in Ireland. It begins with the history of quilting in Ireland, paying particular attention to the occurrence of the quilt as a metaphor in Irish literature. The essay concludes with a description of how the quilt has become a symbol for peace and how the act of quilting has been adopted as a communal response to violence in Northern Ireland.

Quilting as a craft and as art is performed mainly but not exclusively by women however it is relatively hidden in British culture. Folk ideas of patchwork include bed quilts and baby quilts as utilitarian items made by mothers, or grandmothers. These are destined for domestic use. However there are art forms of quilting which are usually referred to as textile art rather than quilts.

Anáil an Bhéil Bheo brings together a stimulating range of interdisciplinary essays considering the connections between orality and modern Irish culture. From literature to song, folklore to the visual arts, contributors examine not only the connections between oral and textual traditions in Ireland, but also the theoretical concept of “orality” itself and the corresponding significance of oral texts in Irish society. Featuring work by emerging scholars in the fields of history, literature, folklore, music, women’s studies, film and theatre studies and disciplines contributing to Irish Studies, this multifaceted volume also includes contributions from scholars long engaged with issues of orality such as Gearóid Ó Crualaoich and Henry Glassie.