When Brian Friel edited the manuscript of the life and times of Inishowen man Charles McGlinchey, he described the memoir as "a chronicle of a period of profound transition" in Ireland.
McGlinchey was born in the remote area of Meentiagh Glen in Clonmany on the western side of the Inishowen Peninsula in 1861 and lived there until his death in 1954. A weaver by trade, his memoirs were written down in the last years of his life by the principal of the local primary school, Patrick Kavanagh, and were edited by Friel and published in book form 15 years ago as The Last of the Name. In telling his story, McGlinchey did not even mention the big issues and events of his times, such as the 1916 Rising or the two World Wars. In his introduction to the text, which has recently been translated into French, Friel says that it is his concentration on the everyday, the daily trivia, that gives "an exact and lucid picture of profound transition".
The result, says Friel, is a work of art, and a picture of "a rural community in the process of shedding the last vestiges of a Gaelic past and of an old Christianity that still cohabited with an older paganism, and of that community coming to uneasy accommodation with the world of today, `the buses, the cars, the silk stockings'."
The McGlinchey Summer School takes place in Clonmany over three days this weekend with the aim of exploring the history and traditions of Inishowen and the north-west.
Speakers include David Dick son, of Trinity College, Dublin, who will compare McGlinchey's text with other memoirs of the same period from rural Ulster.
The natural history of Inishowen will be discussed by John Conaghan and the dialect of the area will be the subject of a talk by Cathal Doherty, from UCD. There will also be a field trip to the Isle of Doagh, a production of John Nee's one-man play The Derry Boat and concerts by local singers and the Calgach Singers from Derry.