Category Archives: Music et al

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
Great Irish Famine, Immigration, Music et al

Declan O’Rourke Indian Meal

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Declan O’Rourke Indian Meal

It is easy to think that during the Great Irish Famine–caused mainly by the potato blight–that there was no other food available to the starving.

Not the case.

As noted in the previous Chronicle  posts (A, B, C, & D), the British landlords of Ireland controlled most of the land and used the best pastures for raising animals, which the owners exported to England and other places.

In other words, there was food, but British bias permitted an acceptance of what most today would label genocide.

There’s ships leavin’ full of pigs, heifers, and lambs

Some transportin’ convicts to Van Diemaen’s Land

We’re hemorrhagin’ barrels of butter and grain

And all that comes back in and all that remains is…

Indian meal, Indian meal, Indian meal.

(Van Diemen’s Land was the original name used for the island of Tasmania, now part of Australia.)
Declan O’Rourke Indian Meal

Indian Meal

Declan O'Rourke Indian Meal
Famine meal ticket

The fifth song of Declan O’Rourke’s Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine album is “Indian Meal.” Once again, the melody belies the message.

The seemingly happy-go-lucky step-dancing tune carries a bitter message: Your potato is gone. Be satisfied with what you can find.

In the midst of the famine, the English changed leadership and charged Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan with famine relief.

Charles Edward Trevelyan

According to the History Place site, “ Trevelyan ordered the closing of the food depots in Ireland that had been selling…Indian corn. He also rejected another boatload of Indian corn already headed for Ireland. His reasoning, as he explained in a letter, was to prevent the Irish from becoming “habitually dependent” on the British government. His openly stated desire was to make “Irish property support Irish poverty.”

Declan O’Rourke Indian Meal

Penny a pound

Despite that laissez-faire policy, corn meal did become one of the things that the starving Irish did have access to.

Somewhat.

For a penny a pound. Storehouses often stayed full of Indian meal because the starving who literally stood outside the storehouse,  had no money.

Declan O’Rourke Indian Meal

Bothar bui–Yellow Road

They’re pavin’ the streets of Americay

With gold at your feet for a dollar a day

While here on the works we make botharin bui

For the yella’ or barely a shillin’ a piece.

Road workers, in lieu of cash, accepted Indian meal as payment. Ironically, at the same time that myth described the streets of America as “paved with gold,” many roads of Ireland became known as “yellow roads” because workers survived–barely–on the yellow corn meal.

Some rural Irish roads today still contain the name Bothar bui.

For the majority of the Irish, daily life was often a torturous path to death by disease due to starvation.

Declan O’Rourke Indian Meal

Nicholas Cummins

Again from the History Place site: Nicholas Cummins, the magistrate of Cork, visited the hard-hit coastal district of Skibbereen. “I entered some of the hovels,” he wrote, “and the scenes which presented themselves were such as no tongue or pen can convey the slightest idea of. In the first, six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearances dead, were huddled in a corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horsecloth, their wretched legs hanging about, naked above the knees. I approached with horror, and found by a low moaning they were alive — they were in fever, four children, a woman and what had once been a man. It is impossible to go through the detail. Suffice it to say, that in a few minutes I was surrounded by at least 200 such phantoms, such frightful spectres as no words can describe, [suffering] either from famine or from fever. Their demoniac yells are still ringing in my ears, and their horrible images are fixed upon my brain.”

Declan O’Rourke Indian Meal
Great Irish Famine, Music et al

Declan O’Rourke Poor Boy’s Shoes

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Declan O’Rourke Poor Boy’s Shoes

Emilee Martin of Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School created this work for the United Way of Greater St. Louis and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s 100 Neediest Cases.

The fourth song on Declan O’Rourke’s Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine was its genesis song. That is, it was the story  that initially inspired O’Rourke to create the album.

Declan O'Rourke Poor Boys Shoes
Peadar Ua Laoghaire

He had serendipitously  come across a 1995 book by John O’Connor: The Workhouses of Ireland: The Fate of Ireland’s Poor. In O’Connor’s preface, he referred  to a story from Peadar Ua Laoghaire’s 1915 autobiography, Mo Sceal Fein.

Declan O’Rourke Poor Boy’s Shoes

“Well he danced….”

Well, he danced with her that summer until it showed on her sweet face

How she was taken by the warmth of him, and all his gentle ways

Then he swore to her his love was true

And he married her in poor boy’s shoes

Happy enough

The music behind  Poor Boys Shoes cheerily accompanies the age-old story of a poor young man who fell in love with a girl who had flowers in her hair.

Love at first sight.

She fell in love with him, too. He married her in his poor boy shoes. Like Clogman’s Glen, the struggling story begins before the Great Famine. Life is as expected: difficult but with love and  companionship and a family.

Blight

The blight and resulting famine arrived. Life turns.

The story and song turn.

Two starving children.

The refusal to give in.

The refusal to give up  their children to the Poorhouse, a place that might save them, but a place overwhelmed and where mistreatment  likely occurred alongside attempts to proselytize them to the Church of England.  The price paid for charity.

Quid Pro Quo

The songs about the 19th century indifference by those with to those without sadly reflect the views of many in the 21st century.

Charity becomes a quid pro quo. Give up this to eat. Give up that to have medical attention. Be less like “us” to receive our aid.

Declan O’Rourke Poor Boys Shoe’s