Portrait of a mythographer: discourses of identity in the work of Father James McDyer.

Their attitude [the farmers of Gleann Cholmcille] sprang from their traditionally disenfranchised existence and their isolation from involvement in progress. James McDyer, An Autobiography

I inherited my strong sense of nationalism from my own father, who himself witnessed some of the worst effects of evictions by British landlords. And his father, in turn, had passed on to him the feelings of outrage when the Irish were allowed to die in their hundreds of thousands during the Great Famine of 1847. James McDyer, An Autobiography

I have learned as a teacher that it's no damn good preaching justice and equality of a Sunday without charitable work to insure that it happens on Monday. James McDyer's voice on a videotape at An Clachan

THESE epigraphs are taken from the writings of James McDyer (1910-87), who served as parish priest of Gleann Cholmcille, a remote Gaeltacht, or Irish-speaking area, in Donegal from the early 1950s until his death. (1) During that time he commanded a key place in Irish culture by speaking to audiences both at home and abroad about the necessity of revitalizing the West, stopping the flow of emigration, and creating opportunities for people to stay in Ireland. He commanded international attention. He is regarded by many today as the force that swept the Irish-speaking village out of its centuries-old private status into the global arena. In 1981 a National Geographic map arrowed Gleann Cholmcille with the label, "An experiment in cooperative farming and tourist cabins transformed this isolated village" (Judge 1981).

The epigraphs show that McDyer was keenly aware of his past, but that he had a penchant for radical change. Although many of his experiments, some undertaken almost singlehandedly, were doomed to failure, a number of shifts in Irish life occurred because of him. These are reflected in and promulgated at An Clachan, the folk museum that McDyer established in Gleann Cholmcille in 1967, built in the form of a village or "clachan," where each house is a replica of dwellings used by local people during the last three centuries and each is furnished with furniture, artifacts, and utensils of its particular period. A testimony of his views is also found in Fr. McDyer of Glencolumbkille: An Autobiography, written in 1982, five years before his death, distributed and acclaimed across Ireland, and widely read (Taylor 1995:144). The book jacket proclaims McDyer a radical socialist with a sensitive and humorous personality.

This essay explores two sets of discursive materials. First, it examines McDyer's writings about himself to understand how a new model of Irish identity was being constructed in mid- to late-twentieth-century Ireland. It focuses on how McDyer used the genre of autobiography to literally create an image of himself for a present and future readership. Second, following recent scholarship on museums, the essay considers the significance of the structure of An Clachan, the layout of its exhibits, and the speeches of its docents. One can better understand the discourses of both the autobiography and the folk museum if they are situated within a larger frame that includes classic models of Irish identity as well as domestic and international innovations that were occurring during McDyer's lifetime. The latter were particularly useful in facilitating a transformation in societal expectations of Catholic priests (Lee 1989:395).

If autobiographical and museum language reveal the process by which McDyer constructed a model of Irishness, testimonials from community members about McDyer expose resistance to the new model. They reveal how, through a number of strategies and negotiations, McDyer used Gleann Cholmcille's villagers to create both a characterization of himself and an image of themselves. Repeatedly people report that aspects of village history were suppressed, altered, and redefined, and they disclose how their personal household goods were turned into artifacts and commodities. The resistance to McDyer in turn points to alternate constructions of identity.