Remembering the Great Hunger as 2013 Famine Commemoration nears

A good overview of The Great Hunger and the harsh conditions of 19th century Ireland in Current Archaeology magazine. The story focuses on mass graves at the Kilkenny Workhouse, which were excavated in 2006.

Despite the desperate circumstances driving the burials and the extreme poverty of those interred, the mass graves did not take the form of bodies merely dumped in pits. The importance of dignity in death was keenly felt in 19th century Ireland, with the traditional Irish wake forming an essential custom for rich and poor alike. 

The story also offers a reminder of how desperate conditions were for Ireland’s poorest even before the potato blight. Writing in 1835, Frenchman Gustave de Beaumont observed:

I have seen the Indian in his forests, and the Negro in his chains, and thought, as I contemplated their pitiable condition, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness; but I did not then know the condition of unfortunate Ireland … In all countries, more or less, paupers may be discovered; but an entire nation of paupers is what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland.

The 2013 National Famine Commemoration is set for 12 May in Kilrush, County Clare.

Cruise’s ‘Irish heritage’ certificate a wee bit too much for many

The gifting of a Certificate of Irish Heritage to actor Tom Cruise seems to be generating more outrage than good will for Irish tourism. Here’s a sample of reader comments from The Irish Times story:

Millionaire American discovered to have Irish ancestry. This wouldn’t be the Year Of The Gathering would it?

Anything to get the tourists in! What next? Osama Bin Ladens great great granny was from Aran Mór?

This desperate need to claim everyone and everything as Irish is pathetic.

The Times also did a story in October about how the CIH wasn’t attracting much support. It suggested “a paltry 0.00167 per cent of our 60 million diaspora are willing to shell out €40 for a piece of paper that proclaims their right to eat Taytos and to stand up when the DJ plays the national anthem doesn’t bode well for The Gathering 2013, our ‘spectacular, year-long celebration of all things Irish.’ “

Besides, “Far and Away” was horrible, in part because of TC’s terrible Irish accent.

So was the Foreign Births Registration of Irish citizenship I obtained in 1997 a similar sentimental shakedown? I don’t think so. At least I’ve known most of my Irish relatives in person. And the Ireland/EU passport I hold is a real document, hardly something “suitable for framing.”

At least it lets me walk through the “Irish Only” line at Dublin Airport.

Changed utterly: a terrible beauty is born

Easter, 1916

By WILLIAM BUTLER YEATES

I have met them at close of day

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head

Or polite meaningless words,

Or have lingered awhile and said

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done

Of a mocking tale or a gibe

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,

Being certain that they and I

But lived where motley is worn:

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

 

That woman’s days were spent   

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers

When, young and beautiful,

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school

And rode our wingèd horse;

This other his helper and friend

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,

So sensitive his nature seemed,

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

 

Hearts with one purpose alone   

Through summer and winter seem

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,

The rider, the birds that range

From cloud to tumbling cloud,

Minute by minute they change;

A shadow of cloud on the stream

Changes minute by minute;

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,

And a horse plashes within it;

The long-legged moor-hens dive,

And hens to moor-cocks call;

Minute by minute they live:

The stone’s in the midst of all.

 

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven’s part, our part

To murmur name upon name,

As a mother names her child

When sleep at last has come

On limbs that had run wild.

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith

For all that is done and said.

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;

And what if excess of love

Bewildered them till they died?

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Good Friday’s 15th, Easter’s 97th

The actually anniversary dates don’t come until later in April, but the movable Holy Week calendar reminds us of two important anniversaries: the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and the Easter Rising of 1916.

“Fifteen years on, despite periodic setbacks, [the GFA] has delivered on its promise by bringing a deadly conflict with centuries-old political and religious roots almost to end,” World News Forecast says in a preview piece. Of course Union Jack demonstrations and the reemergence of dissident republican groups remind us that not all “the troubles” are in the past.

As for the 1916 Easter proclamation, it famously begins, “Irishmen and Irishwomen…” Here’s a piece from Dublin People headlined “The women of 1916.”

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Two great stories on Irish, Irish-American history

Dan Barry, one of my favorite New York Times columnists, has produced back-to-back pieces about Irish and Irish-American history. Both are worth the read.

The latest piece is about the excavation of a mass grave of Irish railroad workers who died near Philadelphia during a cholera epidemic in 1832. The remains of one worker were just returned to County Donegal for burial.

On St. Patrick’s Day, the Times published Barry’s story about the amazing collection of Irish historical items accumulated by a County Mayor fish merchant. Be sure to check out the Time’s multimedia presentation and visit the Jackie Clarke Collection website.

In a 2009 “Talk to the Newsroom” feature answering reader questions, Barry had this to say about his career choice:

I became a journalist because I was raised to honor and appreciate the power of the written word. As I’ve written before, my Irish mother was a storyteller by nature; this is how she communicated. And my New York City father emerged from a difficult, Depression-era childhood with a healthy distrust of authority.

Bonus: here is Barry’s 2008 piece, “Does the Real Ireland Still Exist?”

ConnectIreland offers cash to send jobs to the homeland

Here’s a link to my Tampa Bay Business Journal blog about ConnectIreland’s effort, plus another pitch for the St. Patrick’s Day food drive in Tampa.

Wear the green. Help the needy.

Quinnipiac’s “Great Hunger” archive and museum

Spent the day at Quinnipiac University’s An Gorta Mor (The Great Hunger) archive collection and separate museum, a short drive from the Hamden, Conn., campus.

More than 1.5 million Irish died of starvation and disease between 1845 and 1850, and more than 2 million others emigrated aboard the “coffin ships,” many of them also dying before reaching Canada and the United States.

The Lender Family Special Collection at the Arnold Bernhard Library “includes over 700 volumes on the actual famine period and others focusing on peripheral issues that helped shape the events surrounding the tragedy.” For example, I viewed an 1846 townland survey of County Kerry.

I spent most of my time reviewing documents from the collection of British Parliamentary Papers, including quarterly reports of agrarian violence in the late 19th century and emigration returns from 1912 and 1913, the year my maternal grandparents left Kerry for Pittsburgh.

Special thanks to Robert A. Young, public services librarian, for helping to make the material available.

The museum, which opened in September, “is home to the world’s largest collection of visual art, artifacts and printed materials relating to the starvation and forced emigration that occurred throughout Ireland from 1845 to 1850. Works by noted contemporary Irish artists are featured, as well as a number of important 19th and 20th-century paintings.”

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Many of the pieces are very moving, such as “The Leave Taking,” above, a 2000 cast bronze that shows about a dozen figure along a ship’s gangway. The detail here shows a child being carried to the ship while the mother is restrained at the dock.

The collection also contains a miniature version of “Famine Ship,” John Behan’s outdoor sculpture at the foot of Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, which I viewed after climbing the mountain in 2001.

More to say about the archive and the museum, but let me emphasize that both are worth the trip to Quinnipiac.

Ribbon cutting at Irish Cultural Museum, New Orleans

Irish Cultural Museum of New Orleans hosting St. Patrick’s Day ribbon cutting with Eamon Gilmore. Event begins 2:30 pm at 933 Conti Street in the Quarter.

RSVP to Info@Icmnola.com. Or support during your next visit to New Orleans.

Memories of Listowel Writer’s Week

The Facebook page of the Listowel Writer’s Week is asking for stories of the annual literary event in North Kerry. Here’s my post:

Last year, visiting family in North Kerry, my wife and I attended Paul Durcan’s 1 June reading at the Arms Hotel. The lovely Feale shimmered outside the ballroom window behind the poet as he read “On the First Day of June.” He said, “In Cork and Kerry/On the first day of June on the island of Ireland/Through the black rain the sun shone.” It was magical, of course, and afterward I really didn’t mind the 30-minute queue to have Durcan sign his book for my wife while she and the cousins secured a corner of the pub. The magic was just beginning!

Fields of green: baseball in Ireland

MLB spring training baseball is in full swing here in Florida, and my wife and I attended our first game of the season on Saturday in Lakeland, watching the “home” Detroit Tigers beat the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates 4 -1. The game-time temperature was 57 F (14 C) under breezy, partly cloudy skies. Year-round Floridians such as ourselves bundled against the “cold,” while the Detroit and Pittsburgh visitors (and most players) seemed to take the weather in stride.

I was thinking about baseball in Ireland, having recently come across the Field O’ Dreams website though my Twitter feed. The New York-based Baseball United Foundation is raising money to build a baseball field in Ashbourne, County Meath.

Baseball in Ireland isn’t as new or as rare as you might think. The sport has been played in the Republic and Northern Ireland since the late 1980s. Here’s a history from Baseball Ireland, the sport’s governing body

Back in the summer of 1990 I donated a baseball glove to the pioneers of baseball in Ireland through my good friend Scott Cronenweth, a technology marketing copywriter then doing work for Lotus Development Corp, now part of IBM. At the time, many US software companies were opening development offices outside Dublin to advantage the well-educated, English-speaking workforce and Irish tax breaks. In a recent email, Scott picked up the story of his trip and first-hand encounter with early Irish baseball/softball:

Many of the [software] companies had softball teams and played one another. The Irish folks were very determined, but of course terrible because they hadn’t played as kids. They also didn’t really know the rules. Fielding in particular was really poor, resulting in astounding scores like 78-56. They’d just keep playing, inning after inning, til it got dark around 10PM and then go to the pubs.

Baseball and softball in Ireland have come a long way since then, but the sports still need help developing decent fields and obtaining adequate equipment. Spring training is already underway for the 2013 Adult League season, which begins March 23. They play for love of the game, and in Ireland they are not bothered by a little brisk weather.

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Aerial view of O’Malley Fields in Dublin.