Tag Archives: Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine

Declan O’Rourke Indian Meal

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

Declan O’Rourke Poor Boy’s Shoes

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

Declan O’Rourke Buried Deep

Declan O’Rourke Buried Deep

Painting by Rodney Charman which he created through historical research to depict the grueling passage of the coffin ships

Buried in the Deep

Declan O'Rourke Buried Deep

To many of the famished Irish, the light at the end of starvation’s tunnel–and a faint one at that–was a passage to America.  Some two million emigrated between 1845 and 1855.  Ireland’s population before the famine was about 8.5 million meaning that nearly a quarter of its population left in those 10 years.

Declan O’Rourke Buried Deep

Human Ballast

Of course the poor cannot afford comfortable space aboard a ship. In fact, these poor literally became ballast. Ships bringing cargo to Europe found that these millions leaving were a source of both revenue and ship stability back across the stormy Atlantic.

The ships cargo area simply became living holds where disease spread quickly among those whose health was already poor. Their choice: to know they would die at home or the hope to survive an horrific trans-Atlantic journey.

Declan O’Rourke Buried Deep

Forsaken

Declan O'Rourke Buried Deep
Rodney Charman painting

Forsake:  leaving that by which natural affection or a sense of duty should or might have led us to remain

Once again, a soft acoustic guitar opens O’Rourke’s song and once again his playing belies his lyrics–but the bag pipe’s entrance removes the possibility of hope as hope slowly slips into the Atlantic’s depths and washes away the tears of the dead if not the living left behind. He nearly whispers:

The land where I was born is forsaken,

And I can no longer call it home

It’s beauty is forlorn

It’s no place for my family

Ach o mo bhroin.

(Ach o mo bhroin is Irish for “But for my grief”)

Declan O’Rourke Buried Deep

Paupers  at sea

To people who had never been on a ship, to people who likely could not swim, to people who had already buried family, to people starving,  to people hanging by a thread, the prison of the cargo hold became a living mass coffin.Declan O'Rourke Buried Deep

Until they died. Then the Atlantic became their grave. Buried in the deep.

When I die they’ll put me over

That’ll cure my broken heart

My dreams can go no further

We’re buried in the deep

Where hunger cannot find us.

The London Celtic Punks review says of the song: A beautiful song with Declan accompanied by harp and pipes on this stunning lament to those poor souls. Emotion spilling out it brought a flush to my cheeks as the realisation of what happened hits home.

Edward Laxton wrote The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America.  (1997 LA Times review)

Declan O'Rourke Buried in the Deep

Farewell to you Erin…

Declan O’Rourke Buried Deep