The album cover of Declan O’Rourke’s Chronicles of the Irish Famine displays a group of eight surrounding a shirtless man on the ground. Without knowing the story, we could easily misinterpret the scene as that of a rescue.
It is not.
Declan O’Rourke Johnny Hold Lantern
Respite and revenge
While it would be possible to fill an album with 13 songs about the peasants starvation and mistreatment during the Famine, having one song that provides a smile, however briefly, for the downtrodden is welcome.
Declan O’Rourke Johnny Hold Lantern
Capt Charles Boycott
Peasants rented the land they worked. The landlord determined the rent. No rent paid? Eviction.
In 1880 after the Famine (but still long before Irish independence) the Irish Land League fought back against unreasonable evictions, particularly those that Captain Charles Boycott was executing for his employer Lord Erne.
The League told the locals they should socially shun the Captain: his workers stopped work in the fields and stables, as well as in his house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him, and the local postman refused to deliver mail.
The name Boycott became the word boycott.
Declan O’Rourke Johnny Hold Lantern
Manning
Manning was a cruel landlord from the town of Delvin in Co. Westmeath. In this case violence was the cure.
When we first listen to the music, it is easy to think of it as a happy-go-lucky tune. Toe-tapping. Raise a glass. Slàinte.
It is all those things, but we must mix in words.
Declan O’Rourke Johnny Hold Lantern
A pistol man
On the road outside of Delvin
From the shadow of the trees
A man drew out his pistol
And a man fell to his knees.
Oh. OK.
The pistol man leaves, but on his way away he lets others know something.
Others show up. Johnny is with them. Johnny holds the light.
Young Johnny’s hands were freezin’
But he held the lantern high
As the dead man lay there gazin’
And the flame danced in his eyes.
Revenge is a dish best served cold. And on one cold night during the Great Irish Famine it was the main course.
It is easier to mistreat others as long as we paint “them” as inferior, non-human. The British did just that with the Irish. Even their Punch cartoons dehumanized the Irish.
Bob Dylan excoriated William Zantzinger, the man who killed Hattie Carroll.
Declan O’Rourke does the same to Curry Shaw.
Declan O’Rourke Villain Curry Shaw
Coffin Ships
As the number of Irish fleeing their homeland by sea increased, the conditions on board ships worsened as unscrupulous ship owners realized a golden opportunity. The refugees literally became ballast. Disease and death spread easily and even the long-hoped for arrival at an American port often meant weeks of quarantine.
In 1847 the US Congress passed the Passenger Act. The Act’s purported intent was to regulate the carriage of passengers in these vessels. In actuality, rather than abide by the new Act, unscrupulous shipping companies simply changed their destination to Canada and continued using the same ill-equipped ships. The Irish could stay there (as many did) or find their way to the United States.
Declan O’Rourke Villain Curry Shaw
The Hannah
On April 5, 1849, under the command of Captain Curry Shaw, The Hannah set sail for Quebec. Its last cargo had been coal. This time the ship’s cargo was 176 passengers, the great majority of whom were from the Parish of Forkill, South Armagh.
While records are not completely available, there are numerous allegations that Shaw confined the passengers below deck for long periods, cut the rations of food and water and threw the three latrines overboard after a few days at sea.
William Graham, the ship’s English surgeon , witnessed Shaw “crawling into the bunks of unmarried women passengers,” raping them.
Declan O’Rourke Villain Curry Shaw
Cabot Strait
The Cabot Strait lies between New Newfoundland and Cape Breton and leads into the Gulf of St Lawrence and thence to the St Lawrence River. At 4 a.m. on April 29, 1849, in gale-force wind, the Hannah rammed a reef of ice in the Cabot Strait.
Shaw ordered the hatch covers nailed shut and despite the efforts of Dr Graham to stop them, Shaw, the first and second mates and a few crewmen abandoned the sinking ship in the ship’s only lifeboat.
Declan O’Rourke Villain Curry Shaw
Some rescued
As the ship sank, the passengers, able to get out after a crewman opened the hatches, sought the “safety” of the ice floes. There they waited until 6:30 pm when Captain William Marshall of the ‘Nicaragua’ discovered the survivors on the ice. He and his crew were able to rescue of 129 passengers and nine seamen.
The people so suffered from hypothermia that most had to be lassoed by the Nicaragus’ crew and hauled aboard. Marshall said ‘no pen can describe the pitiable situation and destitution of these passengers’.
He transferred some of the passengers to four other ships and arrived in Quebec fourteen days later; one day after Captain Shaw who had reported the total loss of all on board the ‘Hannah’.
Declan O’Rourke Villain Curry Shaw
Aftermath
Captain Marshall received an inscribed silver goblet from the Irish in Quebec. Most of the surviving passengers continued to North Crosby, Westport, Ontario, which their descendants still call ‘little South Armagh’.
Surgeon Graham testified against Curry Shaw, Shaw received no punishment. Graham had broken his ankle jumping from the ship and trying to stop Shaw. Shaw had repulsed Graham’s attempt by hitting him with a cutlass.
Graham died from his various injuries and frostbite a month later.
Declan O’Rourke Villain Curry Shaw
Two passenger stories
John Murphy
John Murphy had put his 6-year-old twin boys, Owen and Felix, aboard an ice floe, thinking it safe. He swam off to rescue 3-year-old Rose. Murphy then turned to his boys as they drifted away. He lost them in the darkness, forever. He lost all of his teeth from frostbite.
Ann McGinn
Ann McGinn husband had emigrated in 1848. She traveled with their six children to join him in Ontario.
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
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
