Perhaps the most striking and, in a sense, disappointing thing about James Joyce's Trieste library as it is held today by the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas, is its pristine condition. While the bibliophile might enjoy the almost unmarked and near-perfect condition of the collection, the Joycean scholar longs for something messier: scribbles in the margins, turned-down pages, broken spines. But there is almost nothing there for the forensic detective to ponder. Other than the haunting and exciting experience of reading the books that Joyce read, and imagining him lifting those very same volumes down from their shelves over a century ago, there is not a great deal to be had in the way of a eureka moment. An exception to this general pattern is a well-thumbed, loose-leafed, card-covered copy of Douglas Hyde's Love Songs of Connacht published in 1905. Cóilín Owens argued with his usual flair some twenty years ago for seeing the first song in this collection, ‘If I Were to Go West’, as a hidden and oblique ghost text behind ‘The Dead’, informing, in particular, Gabriel's epiphany and realization that the time has come to journey westward.