Catherine Connolly meets the Donegal diaspora in Scotland - including Packie Bonner

Winnie McHugh’s brief conversation with President Catherine Connolly came some 75 years after she left Co Donegal for Scotland in search of work, but the 92-year-old’s command of the Irish language has never waned in the interim. You never forget the language, she told Connolly in Irish, sitting in a room in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow on Thursday. The President held McHugh’s hand as they exchanged cúpla focal. “Deas bualadh leat [good to meet you],” Connolly said as she moved on. The President was visiting an exhibition in the library celebrating people like McHugh – young men and women who left Donegal for Scotland to earn a living and, often, to send money home to families struggling in poverty. The exhibition, titled “Working Over By”, was named for the colloquial term used to describe those who had left for Scotland. “We didn’t have any earnings in Ireland so we had to come over here to earn our living,” McHugh said, sitting with her daughter and granddaughter, Noreen (61) and Máiréad McEnroe (25). READ MORE“We were always sorry leaving home. It was sad, sad, sad,” she said.“We always looked forward [to] going home then at Christmas, we would be stroking off all the days to Christmas, to get back home to see our people,” she added, laughing gently.McHugh was the eldest of the 13 Gallagher siblings, from Tully, Dungloe in the Rosses. All of them worked in Scotland for a period, with some – including McHugh – opting to settle in their adopted home. “They all had to work for a living to make sure that they earned enough money to keep the rest of the family going, and sending money home,” said her daughter, Noreen.Standing across the room were Mairi Boyle (64) and Anne Doherty (67), the daughters of a Buncrana-born “Tunnel Tiger”, a nickname given to Donegal labourers who worked on the underground sections of the British road and rail network.The pair became emotional as they spoke about their father, Jim McLaughlin, and Boyle’s father-in-law John Boyle, who left Árainn Mhór, also to work on the tunnels. McLaughlin, who emigrated at 16, almost died when he fell down a trench while on a job. When he recovered, he went straight back to construction work. “As it so happens, this is his anniversary today,” Doherty said. Boyle pointed to a 1955 photograph in the exhibition, of her father-in-law. He is smiling widely, posing with colleagues during a break from tunnelling work. “He worked really hard, he was always smiling,” she said. “You wonder where they’d have been without the Irish. The people from Donegal in particular. Not only the men, but the women too,” she added.Packie Bonner, the former Republic of Ireland and Celtic goalkeeper, was standing by photographs capturing him during his playing days with the Glasgow club where he spent his entire career.Packie Bonner, President Catherine Connolly and Brian McEnery at Mitchell Library, Glasgow on Friday. Photograph: Maxwells People from Donegal, for many decades, have had “a huge impact here in Scotland”, he said. “Scotland was good for them, so they contributed to it.”The exhibition seeks to celebrate the working lives of the Donegal migrants whose occupations might have been seen as ordinary, according to Joseph Gallagher, heritage officer at Donegal County Council. “You just see the strong ties that are still there, and that have persisted over the many generations,” he said.