Patrick MacGill (24 December 1889 – November 1963) was an Irish journalist, poet and novelist, known as "The Navvy Poet" because he had worked as a navvy before he began writing.
MacGill was born in Glenties, County Donegal. A statue in his honour is on the bridge where the main street crosses the river in Glenties.
During the First World War, MacGill served with the London Irish Rifles (1/18th Battalion, The London Regiment) and was wounded at the Battle of Loos on 28 October 1915.
MacGill wrote a memoir-type novel called "Children of the Dead End".
In early 2008, a docu-drama starring Stephen Rea was made about the life of Patrick MacGill. One of the film's locations was the boathouse of Edinburgh Canal Society at Edinburgh on the Union Canal, and one of its rowing boats.
An annual literary summer school is held in Glenties in mid July each year in his honour.
Famous quotes containing the words patrick and/or gill:
“And no one knows what’s yet to come.
For Patrick Pearse had said
That in every generation
Must Ireland’s blood be shed.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building—like Tower Bridge—or a classical front put on a steel frame—like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living—not something added, like sugar on a pill.”
—Eric Gill (1882–1940)