Product Description

'So whenever I die, they will know where to bury me. And after my day the grave will not be opened again, for I'm the last of the name. Charles McGlinchey (1861 1954), weaver and tailor, lived his entire life on the Inishowen Peninsula in Donegal. Never married, he outlived his brothers and sisters, none of whom left an heir and so became 'the last of the name'. On winter evenings in the 1940s and '50s, McGlinchey would visit the local schoolmaster, Patrick Kavanagh, and talk about his life and times. Master Kavanagh kept a careful record of his friend's words and 30 years later his son, Desmond, passed the handwritten manuscript to Brian Friel who edited it into its present form. Here then, thanks to the devotion of a schoolmaster and the editing of a master dramatist, is a voice that transports us to a period now beyond the grasp of living memory, telling a story that is at once autobiography, a compendium of folklore and a vivid account of the life and times of a particular community in the north-west of Ireland.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23561 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Review
This is a book full of emotional truth and the beauty of immediate, trusting speech, overbrimming with folklore of great imaginative richness. --Seamus Heaney

About the Author
Charles McGlinchey (1861-1954), weaver and tailor, lived his entire life on the Inishowen Peninsula in Donegal. Never married, he outlived his brothers and sisters, none of whom left an heir and so he became 'the last of the name'.

Customer Reviews

Social history
I read this book with great pleasure, it is very well edited. A must for family and social historians, it is a memoir of a man from a small Irish community, taken down by his friend the local school teacher. It has memories from his grandparents, parents and his own recollections covering a good century and a half. Buy it now!