Glenmornanorder this book
Patrick MacGill
Price £ 30.00

Published after the First World War, Glenmornan is the sequel to Patrick MacGill's two earlier autobiographical novels, Children of the Dead End and The Rat Pit. The book tells of his experience of sophisticated English upper-middle class life, and how he rejected it in favour of a return to his native Ireland, finding happiness as a member of a warm, vital village community.

He fell in love with a local girl and the book describes the development of their relationship, as well as scenes from contemporary rural life. Eventually, MacGill's new sophistication alienates him from the community; as a result of his criticism of the church, he bitterly quarrels with the local priest. This culminates in the priest preaching against him, which leads to his virtual ostracism by the whole village (including his own mother and sisters) and to his leaving Ireland for ever.

This is a strong, poignant book, contrasting English and Irish life vividly and colourfully, which is given additional cohesion by MacGill's hunger to return to the place of his birth, and his tragic expulsion.

From Chapter 2 "Glenmornan":

"The people live frugally and are for the most part very poor. Most families have sufficient land to keep two cows and some can keep more. A household is judged by its stock, and a family with four cows grass to its name, will not marry into a family which can only boast of three cattle.

"There are three Protestant families in the glen, but religious rancour is not known. The class differences are more pronounced than the religious differences. The Quigleys, with one of their family a priest and another a nun, hold themselves as much aloof from the poor Catholics as from the poor Protestants.

"A Glenmornan house is generally a onestoreyed building with a flagged floor and a thatched roof. Only three or four houses in the place are slated. The roof beams of a house are generally of black oak which has been dug from the bogs. The principal room of a house is the kitchen, a large and spacious apartment where the household assemble for meals and where all the family foregather when the hours of outdoor work come to an end. There is seldom more than two rooms in a house and both serve as sleeping chambers. The byre is attached to the house, but ducks and pigs are kept in a separate building.

"The food of the people, for the most part, consists of tea, bread, butter, potatoes and porridge. This latter dish is always called 'porridge' by the quality of Greenanore; those who dwell in the butt-end of Glenmornan generally call it 'stirabout,' but the mountainy people always call it "brahun-ray." The various degrees of refinement in the barony can be traced by the names given to this simple dish.

"Eating is a very casual matter with the glen people. The women generally eat standing, breaking off at intervals to do some job or another. The children squat on the floor when eating, but the men for the most part sit round a table. There is no fixed hour for meals. The glen people eat when they are hungry if there is food to go round.

"There are very few amusements and very few holidays in Glenmornan. Work is always carried on, Sunday and Saturday. Cows have to be milked, fed and tended, children have to be cared for, dishes have to be washed on every day of the week. The labour of a farm never comes to an end. None but the very rich can observe a strict Sabbath in Greenanore. It is just the same in many other parts of the world."

ISBN 0904573818. Hardback, 320 pages.

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