@studiesirishreview.bsky.social recently featured in the @irishtimes.com in an article by Brian Mooney.
"The journal Studies is publishing a special issue, Shaping the Future of Irish Education: A Contribution to the Conversation, brought together by Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh."
![Manchán was in truth, a prophet. Not one who foretells the future, but one who tells forth into our present, who speaks with the voice of the spirit into the silence of our forgetfulness. His prophecy was not command but invitation. And his message for our time? It is as simple as it is seismic: if we do not walk the path of spirit, our footsteps will fade from the world...Manchán walked the spiritual path quietly, joyfully, and with a rare fidelity. He was both rooted and roaming. He travelled widely, yet his soul was anchored in ten acres of Westmeath, that green middle ground where the four provinces perhaps once met. There, near Lough Lene, in a grass-roofed house in an oak wood, he found home. And it was from that hearth that he reawakened for us an Cúigiú Cúige: the Fifth Province. In Irish, we call a province a cúige, a word born from cúigiú, meaning fifth. So, hidden in every province’s name is a whisper of another, unseen province, one beyond the map and beyond measure Yet, as every schoolchild learns, there are only four provinces: Leinster, Munster, Connacht, and Ulster. All of Ireland, it seems, is already accounted for. But still the word itself remembers that there is more. The word itself carries within it the memory of that fifth province, an Cúigiú Cúige, the province of the heart. Where is this fifth province?...It lies in the realm of the spirit, in the country of the imagination. It is the Ireland that cannot be conquered or divided, because it is the Ireland of the soul. It is a province where the Irish tongue rises again, ina n-éiríonn an Ghaeilge arís, not only in word, but in way...Manchán [showed] us that Ireland is not merely a land to inhabit but a mystery to enter. He reminded us that we are not only people of place, but people of presence. We cannot reach this fifth province by road or rail...We only reach it by kindness, by vision, and by faith, by walking softly on the earth and listening keenly to its song.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:kcl25ybccmxmujbbf42dh6sk/bafkreifwd64nzoxgowj3yfc7wp4rozfplw2nkj4ypd23fmomahkutibfru)
