Monthly Archives: January 2018

Great Irish Famine, History, Music et al

Declan O’Rourke Rattle My Bones

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Declan O’Rourke Rattle My Bones

Declan O'Rourke Rattle My Bones

Starvation, the death of loved ones, the mistreatment of children, and political laissez faire are no laughing matters, yet those suffering can sometimes find a crumb of solace by poking a stick in the eye of horror. Gallows humour.

Declan O’Rourke Rattle My Bones

Departure

The eighth song on Declan O’Rourke’s Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine album is just as sad and upsetting as each of the others. Repeated listening does not dull the pain nor lessen the anger.

In his observations, O’Rourke refers to this song as have blue notes. The Wikipedia entry says that  a blue note is “a note that—for expressive purposes—is sung or played at a slightly different pitch than standard. “

Not a musician, I’m not exactly sure what that means, but my guess is that the song contains something off-key and the result is that the sound grates. If that is the case, then a song about starvation that grates is certainly appropriate.

Declan O’Rourke Rattle My Bones

Alone

The song’s narrator is alone. His wife and children have died.  Now so thin, his bones rattle.

Providence chose to wean us from life

With the longest, and slowest, and bluntest of knives.

Declan O’Rourke Rattle My Bones

From the grave

Yet he sings about it  and then we learn that the narrator is dead and that “the only music to play now I’ve died, Is the squeak of the wheels beneath where I lie.”

Someone else, likely starving as well, now earns his starvation living by pushing a rattling cart along the streets to pick up the dead.

The song’s melody is nearly upbeat. Upbeat in the face of horror.

At this point in the album, we’ve come a long way from the rural beauty of Clogman’s Glen. We’ve arrived on city streets where the starving lie dying outside a storehouse filled with grain.

There is no succor in sight.

Akin to Dylan’s Ironic Eden

The lamppost stands with folded arms
Its iron claws attached
To curbs ‘neath holes where babies wail
Though it shadows metal badge
All and all can only fall
With a crashing but meaningless blow
No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden

Declan O’Rourke Rattle My Bones
Great Irish Famine, History, Music et al, Peace Love Art and Activism

Declan O’Rourke Laissez Faire

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Declan O’Rourke Laissez Faire

Declan O'Rourke Laissez Faire
St Stephen Green’s Park in Dublin. Edward Delaney sculpture called “Famine”
Declan O’Rourke Laissez Faire

The notion that one should love your neighbor as yourself is obviously as old as the milk of human kindness. The notion that people get what they deserve is equally old.

In the late 17th century, the economic view that the less government is part of a merchant’s business the better for the business and eventually the better for the populace in general came to be known as “Laissez faire.” Translated from the the French, the full term–Laissez-nous faire–means, “Leave it to us.”

Unfortunately, the urge to hold onto increased profits is often stronger than the willingness to share the wealth and the thought of those without falls prey to a different view: they deserve what they get.

The term “Social Darwinism” had not yet entered the language, but the idea that “the fittest or best adapted individuals, or entire societies,  prevail” supported the  laissez faire view.

Declan O’Rourke Laissez Faire

Sir Charles Trevelyan

Declan O'Rourke Laissez Faire
Charles Edward Trevelyan

As the potato blight worsened, the British, faced a decision: provide for the poor or let circumstances take their course.

Sir Charles Trevelyan, who had prime responsibility for famine relief in Ireland,  decided that the famine was up to God to alleviate since, “The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated.”

A Trevelyan letter to Edward Twisleton, Chief Poor Law Commissioner in Ireland, contained, “We must not complain of what we really want to obtain. If small farmers go, and their landlords are reduced to sell portions of their estates to persons who will invest capital we shall at last arrive at something like a satisfactory settlement of the country“. [both quotes above are from an Independent article]

O’Rourke’s reply:

Y’er man Travelyan says it’s Laissez Faire

If they were his children he’d fuckin’ well care!

Declan O’Rourke Laissez Faire

Cities suffered as well

Most Great Irish Famine images are of the countryside and certainly that is where the worst suffering occurred, but cities like Dublin had its share of starvation.

Declan O’Rourke’s wrote Laissez Faire with his poor urban ancestors in mind.

How can I fee ye my beautiful son?

All the goodness I have in my body is gone

How an keep ye my duty be done?

To the blazes I can’t keep ye nourished and strong.

Even when charity appeared, it was sometime offered with strings attached: you must, as a Catholic, become a Protestant:

Swap your Catholic halo for a Protestant hoop

And give up your place in heaven for a bowl of soup.

Those who did became known as “soup takers” to those who remained starving rather than give up their faith.

Declan O’Rourke Laissez Faire

1997

In June 1997, British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a statement on the Irish Potato Famine. He said  “The famine was a defining event in the history of Ireland and Britain. It has left deep scars. That one million people should have died in what was then part of the richest and most powerful nation in the world is something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today. Those who governed in London at the time failed their people.” (Independent article).

Ex post facto is little comfort to those who starved to death or to their descendants.

Declan O’Rourke Laissez Faire
Environmental Issues, Great Irish Famine, History

Declan O’Rourke Mary Kate

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Declan O’Rourke Mary Kate

As much as we listeners might want to skirt the pain and however gently O’Rourke  presents “Mary Kate” to us, it is an arrow to the heart.

Harp dominates. Acoustic guitar accompanies. O’Rourke’s voice holds us by the hand, but be forewarned.

Declan O’Rourke Mary Kate

Sisters

There is hope, but the unnamed young sister stands at a crossroads. Children should not have to make such decisions. Children should not have to be in a position to make such decisions. No sister, no orphaned sister, should have to leave behind her sister.

Declan O’Rourke Mary Kate

Henry Grey

With Britain’s deliberately inefficient policy to deal with the Great Famine’s starvation, the cold choice to deport the problem became a solution. Deport the young women from the horrors of the Irish workhouse to Australia where Britain had already deported its felons.

Declan O'Rourke Mary Kate
by Unknown photographer,photograph,1860s

Henry Grey, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies came up with the idea that these young women could settle with these felons and make a good wife or a good servant (likely both).

Famine of hopelessness

Records hardly exist about any of these young women, but we know that the policy,  in reality, forced many of them into prostitution or abusive relationships. Escaping one famine merely to endure another.  A famine of hopelessness in an unknown land as far from home as one could possibly be.

And whether any sister ever saw her sister Kate again or earned the money to send for his sister Kate is a story for which you can write that ending.

Declan O'Rourke Mary Kate

For these two sister, the story ended with…

And Too-ria my Mary Kate

Forever now seet Mary Kate

you won’t see Australia

And we won’t meet in this life again.

There are those today who are trying to memorialize these young women, trying to have history remember them. (Irish Times article)

Declan O’Rourke Mary Kate