Cloughjordan honours thomas macdonagh

The celebration of the life and the home of Thomas MacDonagh, Cloughjordan’s most famous son, is taking place again this May Bank Holiday Weekend in the annual ‘Cloughjordan Honours Thomas MacDonagh’ event.
As usual, this will include the Summer School, entertainments, art and craft exhibitions, the Sunday Public Talk, a recital by the Thomas MacDonagh Pipe Band from Templemore, and much more. A full programme of the many events taking place over the weekend can be found at www.macdonaghheritage.ie.
Although Thomas MacDonagh is probably best known as one of the signatories of the Proclamation, there were many sides to this quiet revolutionary. His love of his birthplace is demonstrated in his poetry, in which he describes the woods, hills and bogs of this area. The students of the local primary schools have been exploring these natural beauties and have produced an exhibition on Knocknacree Wood and Scohoboy Bog, which will be launched at the opening of the weekend on Friday evening, May 1st.
On Saturday May 2nd the annual Summer School takes place. The theme of the talks this year is on two local families, who lived in Cloughjordan while MacDonagh was growing up in the village. The field trip in the afternoon is to Schohaboy Bog and Knocksigowna Hill to learn about the biodiversity and recent developments at both sites.
The educational aspect of the MacDonagh Weekend is continued on Sunday May 3rd with the presentation of new writings by members of Cloughjordan Writers’ Group. Later, there is a talk, which imagines what the opinion of Thomas MacDonagh, in his role as an educationalist, would be of the Eco Village as a centre of education. That talk follows a bilingual guided walk through the Eco Village. Another educational walk takes place in the beautiful Knocknacree Wood on Monday  May 4th when the children from the two local primary schools will share what they have learned in their study of the life in and of the wood.
An annual feature of the Cloughjordan Honours MacDonagh weekend is the public lecture that takes place on Sunday evening. This year the talk is on Jeramiah O’Donovan Rossa, who died in 1915 and at whose funeral Patrick Pearse gave the famous graveside oration “The fools, the fools, the fools! They have left us our Fenian dead… Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
The Cineclub presentation this year, 'Joyeux Noel', commemorates what must be one of the most poignant events of the First World War – the Christmas Eve truce, when young men from the opposing sides emerged from their trenches and played what is probably one of the most famous games of football in history.
It should not be forgotten that MacDonagh was a very sociable man as well as a poet, educationalist and soldier. To reflect this side of the man, there is traditional music in the Railway Bar on Friday May 1st and Oíche Ghaelach in Grace’s Pub on Monday May 4th. An evening with ‘Bawney and Friends’ is a night of music, humour, stories and songs on Saturday May 2nd. 
All the events in this year’s programme are open to the public, and while there is an entry fee for some of the events, many are free. There should be something for everyone to enjoy in this year’s very full and imaginative programme. 
For full details of the programme, go to www.macdonaghheritage.ie. For more information or to book at place at the Summer School, contact 087 3946862 or macdonaghweekend@gmail.com.