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COPYRIGHT 2003 Irish American Cultural Institute
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.
Despite writings and public exhibitions that portray McDyer as a transforming figure, in the final analysis the new model of Irish identity that he represents remains complex and ambiguous. For a number of reasons, those who "buy it" are often outsiders rather than local community members. Moreover, the Irish identity promoted seems to be reserved for one privileged class which benefits at the expense of others, even as classic models of Irish identity continue to operate in subtle ways in Gleann Cholmcille.
MODELS OF IRISH IDENTITY
Three representational strands of Irishness are fundamental to any understanding of McDyer's attempt to reshape Irish identity. The first, which parallels the first epigraph that opens this article, is a set of stereotypes that depict the Irish as barbaric, alcoholic, pagan, feminine, and indolent (L.P. Curtis 1968, 1971; L. Curtis 1984). A review of English characterizations of the Irish over the centuries includes deprecations by such eminent figures as Edmund Spenser, David Hume, Benjamin Disraeli, and Arnold Toynbee. (2) From the seventeenth century, an "ideology of contempt" (Grillo 1989:173) against indigenous Irish culture prevailed; suggestions surfaced frequently in cartoons, anecdotes, and essays that the inferior status of both people and language could be improved if the Irish would adopt English habits and manners.
The image of Irish identity shaped by Irish nationalism and the nation-state resonates well with the second epigraph from McDyer. Nationalists promoted cultural identity in terms of freedom from England and invoked the image of Ireland's West, where citizens could access an "authentic" Irish lifestyle and language. (3) Political discourses drew from ancient literary genres including the aisling, 'vision', in which a beautiful woman representing Ireland is encountered. This concept bolstered the ideology of Irish sovereignty, and by the time of the Easter Rising in 1916, the dream-woman had become a long-suffering mother awaiting, even demanding, deliverance (Greaves 1980:31, Knott and Murphy 1966:52).
This model dominated the political landscape during the formation of the Irish state. Prime Minister Eamon de Valera attempted to create a sense of Irishness by revaluing the West of Ireland in terms of its "heroic past." In de Valera's St. Patrick's Day "dream speech" of 1943, he broadcast his hopes for an Irish culture that was "Gaelic, rural, frugal, Catholic, and isolated," and promoted the ideals of sturdy children, athletic youths, and comely maidens (White 1997:120). Arguing for introspection, conservatism, and protectionism, de Valera embraced perennial Gaeldom as the "truly Irish" vocation (O Crualaoich 1983:49).
Finally, the image of Ireland as island of "saints and scholars" provided the Roman Catholic Church's model of Irishness. This image hearkens to Ireland's medieval past, but it gathered strength from the "devotional...
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