driven back to the old manuscripts for technical guidance - and to the livres d"artiste of the early part of this century - the editors and contributors soon realised that the old canard, that there is no visual arts tradition in ireland, is without foundation. the beginnings of irish art and poetry find a triumphant expression in the early illuminated manuscripts, and the sense of recuperating an ancient tradition in a thoroughly modern idiom became one of the driving excitements of making the book.