The centenary commemorations of the 1916 rebellion, heavily scripted by the official state policies of 2016, has, mainly through the uncritical recycling of pious commonplaces, fixed a specific interpretation of the event in the public memory: a Rising timed to coincide with that of Christ, involving Pearse reading out a proclamation from the GPO  steps and canonized by Yeats’s poem as to its utterly transformative effect. This chapter deconstructs these commonplaces and traces their banal-nationalistic effect on the public commemorations.

Readers of this collection of scholarly studies on migration do not need to be told of Eric's unsurpassed mastery of the widely neglected English diaspora, his seemingly effortless intellectual sweep, or his adroitness in juxtaposing general findings with telling individual narratives. These qualities were all evident at the conference in his honour that gave rise to this book, followed so soon by his shocking and sudden death in London. I could not attend, being gravely ill myself, but was later able to watch the proceedings on video. I imagined that I was there with Eric and exchanging glances with him in the lecture room, along with so many of his friends and mine. It never occurred to me that September that it would be my lot to bid Eric farewell.

We were friends and collaborators for over 30 years, brought together by our obsessive desire to make sense of ‘mass’ migration and find some way of sifting through that mass and recovering its individuality, with all the consequent quirks and aberrations. We were particularly interested in looking at unfamiliar sub-strands to set beside the trans-Atlantic diaspora, and (along with Richard Reid) initiated a series of slim volumes entitled Visible Immigrants to uncover neglected sources for migration to Australia. This required me (I was far from reluctant) to make many brief visits to the Australian National University (ANU) and Flinders University so that we could plan and execute our next moves in the struggle for scholarly enlightenment. The small workshops generating that series have continued intermittently and did much to revive interest in the field.

We began with the thorny challenge of emigrant letters, so rich individually yet so hazardous to use as the basis of generalizations about the migratory experience. Eric was a devotee of Charlotte Erickson's classic Invisible Immigrants, which stood alone for so long in British diaspora studies in its incisive use of personal testimony. We amassed vast quantities of letters throughxiv appeals in Australia, abstracting and transcribing many of them during my longest spell at the ANU in 1990–91. Eric was always the sceptic, I the optimist intent on converting a non-sample into a sample by some magic formula.

Statistical analysis of about 500 passport applications by naturalised Americans (or their relatives) who were born in Leitrim. Though useful only for a brief period, this offers the only systematic documentation of ‘returned Yanks’ intending to make short visits, most of whom came back without children and therefore cannot be identified in the Irish census. Many applications are collated with Irish census returns to establish the origins of applicants from Leitrim, generating a profile similar to that presented in the . In addition to biographical variables, the applications permit analysis of the height and appearance of visitors, which in the case of height may be compared with measurements of the home population (Leitrim female visitors in particular were unusually tall). Comparisons are made with the findings and measurements of Harvard ethnographers who surveyed Leitrim in the mid-1930s.

Discussion of complexities of Irish migration from the Great Famine to the First World War, qualifying crude models of irreversible long-distance emigration: evidence concerning internal, circular, and reverse migration is analysed. Published official returns for Irish reverse migration just before 1914 indicate much higher levels than generally alleged. Much of the chapter is adapted from my four contributions to A New History of Ireland, vols 4, 5. Additional information is given on transatlantic shipping, indicating growing demand for eastward passages and increasing provision by major shipping lines around 1900.

Statistical analysis of information on persons born outside Ireland derived from published census reports, supplemented by additional data and information on individual incomers from digital index for 1901–11. This traces steady increase in foreign, colonial, and British presence, and examines differences between national sub-groups. The most conspicuous expansion was in the presence of Americans, whose profile differed sharply from that of all other groups. The American profile provides context for the following four chapters.

Statistical analysis of census returns for about 1,000 Americans and Canadians in ‘élite’ occupations, designed to show the diversity of human emissaries of ‘Americanisation’ with whom home population came in contact. The selected occupational groups, which exclude agriculturists, labourers, domestic servants, shopkeepers, and merchants, mainly represent ‘service providers’ such as clerks, officials, and professionals. Three idiosyncratic and conspicuous groups not easily fitted into traditional census categories are examined in detail in Chapter 5.

The same data are used to classify the stated objects of those seeking to travel outside the United States, who were overwhelmingly bound for Ireland. The great majority wished to visit relatives, particularly mothers, allowing analysis of the age of specified parents using Irish census returns. The second overlapping motive was the need to attend to property at home, an object often indistinguishable from the wish to visit relatives. Very few Leitrimonians were applying solely as business travellers or tourists.

The same approach is applied, with more documentary contextualisation, to those without occupations but of ‘independent’ or ‘private’ means, and to performers and others involved in the creative arts. Special attention is given to musicians and variety artists, using press reports naming some of the visitors. A special study of Mormon missionaries concludes this chapter.

This pictorial essay with a commentary displays seventy-eight photographs of passport applicants born in Leitrim, arranged according to thirteen themes each occupying one page. These images are set against photographs of eight men from Leitrim who were selected by the Harvard ethnographers to represent Irish racial types. The commentary identifies each applicant by name with some biographical information, and explains the attributes of each type as defined by the ethnographers.

This chapter complements the statistical analysis with details of hundreds of individual cases, allowing modification of statistical generalisations and exploration of nuances.

In rural Ireland, which proportionately housed most of the American-born, almost no incomers belonged to the elite. This chapter collates all family returns, including an American, allowing identification and statistical analysis of accompanying parents born in Leitrim (‘returned Yanks’) as well as the American-born. Leitrim was the county with the highest component of American incomers by 1911 and, at several periods, the highest intensity of outward migration. Virtually all Leitrim Americans and their parents were enumerated in thatched dwellings on farms. Most American incomers were children, often fostered with relatives in poor and remote districts and houses. It follows that the Americans actually observed in rural Ireland typically suggested economic failure and continued reliance of assistance from Irish kinship networks.