Potato Famine CD

Subject: Potato Fa;mine CD
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 25 Jan 12 - 10:27 PM

OK. Let's do it..by descendants of potato famine.

Songs: Mick's if he will let us
Skibereen -- this one is taken
Praties they grow small
Shane McGowan's dune song if he will let us
Pride of Dunquin..me

Any have any recorded? I do want this to be a tribute to our ancestors so you should have ancestors who were in this.

One reason I will always call it the potato famine and nothing else is because that is what I learned to call it. Also, I don't think we should imply that we were the only ones who ever had a famine..think of Ukraine, and Ethiopia and all sorts of places with horrible famines themselves.

Also, I am reading a book on kindle..don;t have it with me right now..about the legislators of the time...they were not as callous and awful as we might have been led to believe. LThey were slow and inefficient but there did not seem to be an attitude of they are only Irish, let them starve.

And one great tragedy I was not aware of..it lmade no sense to make weakened men go and cut stones when they were farmers..one reason so many died on the works was the bad winter and their lack lof winter clothing..but there was a large amount of money to drain the unused land, or even to drain land of landlords that was not tapped into and could have provided work for people to grow other crops, such as oats, which were in fine shape during the 1847 famine at least. One person really pushed this scheme but it never really took off.   mg

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: GUEST,FloraG
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 03:01 AM

Scotland also suffered equally badly from mono culture and the failure of the potato crop. However, the protestant churches made a big effort to relieve suffering so few of the crofters died, thus few Scottish songs.
FloraG.

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 03:29 AM

The late Frank Harte, from Dublin produced an album of Famine songs - The Hungry Voice.
Years ago the director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, in a radio programme on the subject (The Great Silence) made the point that there were very few songs (in English) contemporary to the Famine as people were far too busy dying to sing about it.
The greatest legacy in songs were those about the aftermath - the evictions, emigration and political upheavals that followed.
Suggest you look out the largest collection of emigration songs ever published, Robert L White's, 'Irish Emigrant Songs and Ballads' (Bowling Green University Press, 1975); not easy to get, but well worth the effort.
You might consider the beautiful song 'Lone Shanakile' (a famine Graveyard "where the dead, they lay coffinless, pile after pile".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 03:45 AM

This is a version of Shanakyle as sung by Dervish, but there are better rendidtions IMO
Jim Carroll

Lone Shanakyle
by Thomas Madigan (c. 1860)

Far far from the isle of the holy and grand
Where wild oxen fatten and brave men are banned
All lowly and low in a far distant land
Do I wander and pine for poor Erin

-Chorus-
Lonely and sad I roam, far from my island home
Where the wild waves, surging foams, headlands appearing
Clouded in silv'ry spray, thrashing through heaven's bright ray
For the glory and pride of poor Erin

Sweet, sweet Inis Cathaigh that's sacred and blessed
A fit place for a saint or a warrior's rest
O God that a bear should be best of his brood
Who now bites your beauty my Erin

-Chorus-

How dearly I long to wander once more
To the old ones I left round my own cabin door
My blessings I give ten thousand times o'er
With a prayer and a tear for poor Erin

-Chorus-

Sad, sad is my fate in weary exile
Dark, dark are the night clouds round lone Shanakyle
Your murdered sleep silently pile upon pile
In the coffinless graves of poor Erin

-Chorus-

I am watching and praying through the length of the night
For the grey dawn of freedom my signal to fight
My rifle is ready my sabre is bright
For to strike once again for poor Erin

Lonely and sad I roam, far from my island home
Where the wild waves, surging foams, headlands appearing
Clouded in silv'ry spray, thrashing through heaven's bright ray
For the glory and pride of poor Erin

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: GUEST,Michael
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 05:42 AM

"mono culture" That's rubbish there was corn, barley and other crops grown in Ireland as well as mutton, pork and beef all on land "owned" by the invaders. At the time the huge hordes of food were used to feed protestants and for export to england! The catholics were systematically starved by the english protestants who feared a revolution. They would rather let excess corn rot that give it to Catholics. The whole "famine" thing was a myth created to cover up the genocide. We Irish prefer to call it "the great hunger"

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: Richard from Liverpool
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 05:48 AM

Don't forget to include the Rangers F.C. Famine Song (to the tune of Sloop John B):

"Why don't you go home
Why don't you go home
The famine's over
Why don't you go home."

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 05:56 AM

Suggest anybody with an interest in the Famine read Mrs Cecil Woodham Smith's 'The Great Hunger' - published in 1962 and still the definitive account half a century later IMO.
For a starkly realistic fictionalised representation, Liam O'Flaherty's 'Famine' doesn't have many equals (though not exactly pleasant reading).
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: GUEST,FloraG
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 08:00 AM

Michael - I'm aware of all the things that did not go right in the famine - and the high cost people paid - but you can not ignore the fact that there were just too many people for the land to support, partly from immigration, but also because of an over high birth rate. Better distribution of food would have helped the situation but not prevented the potatoe failure.
The lesson has been taken on board by China, but not many other countries. We are slow to learn the lessons from history. 10% of GBs GDP is financial services - not quite mono culture - but too specialised for our own good?
The songs are great - they help us remember the history - but I'm just not sure how much we learn from them.
FloraG

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 09:32 AM

Flora
A huge over-simplfication on your part I'm afraid, which totally ignores the mass-evictions, the corruption (it was calculated that an 'aid ship' could cross and recross the Irish Sea three or four times without being unloaded, while dealers pushed the price of the cargo up) the massive incompetence, the indifference.... but most of all, that mid-19 century Ireland was as much a part of the British Empire as was Birmingham, and if the famine had happened in the latter, there would be no doubt whatever of the culpability of the British Govenment - can you honestly imagine any government blaming the depopulation by death and emigration of, say Walsall on the people for "having too many babies"?
I live in an area where they still talk about "the soupers"; the Protestant missions which doled out famine relief soup to the starving - on condition that they changed their religion, or "the shilling walls" where English landlords who had been paid two shillings and sixpence by relief agencies for famine-relief labour, but paid the men only one shilling, pocketing the rest for themselves.
Look up the Vandeleur evictions, or Clements, Lord Leitrim (who exercised the feudal 'right' of droit de signeur - sleeping with the bride of his tenents on their wedding night) to see how English landlords behaved towards the Irish at the time.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: GUEST,FloraG
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 11:09 AM

I think you can find examples of such behaviour in most of the UK in that period, not just in Ireland. A lot of the Scottish islands could not support their growing populations and the result was the mass emigrations. The best estimates for the UK suggest that 10% of the population were permenantly undernourished. It still does not negate the fact that Ireland was overpopulated compared to its ability to fed itself.
FloraG

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 12:27 PM

May be the case but in no way explains why Britain was shipping out many tmes the amount of food that could have fed the Irish population.
Nor does it explain the tolerance of evicting tenants unable to pay their rents and simply letting them to starve onthe side of the road.
If you are arguing that this was how the British Empire treated all its subjects, no great argument here, but the fact that, in spite of the famine there was enough food being produced in Ireland to feed the population several times over 1 million people starved to death and 1 million forced to emigrate. Take into consideration the 'Irish Problem' and it seems an inescapable probability was seen as a 'final solution'.
I wonder why the queen felt it necessary to apologise last year if it really was "nuffin' to do wiv us guv"!!
And I repeat, no government would have got away with the "too many children" defence if it had been Birmingham, Liverpool or Manchester, or are you suggesting that they would?
Can't help noticing that you are avoiding comment on the behaviour of Britain as colonisers - as described.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: maeve
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 12:32 PM

"OK. Let's do it..by descendants of potato famine.

Songs: Mick's if he will let us
Skibereen -- this one is taken
Praties they grow small
Shane McGowan's dune song if he will let us
Pride of Dunquin..me"


It sounds like an interesting project, Mary.

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 12:34 PM

There is plenty of blame to go around but for the purposes of this CD we will just focus on what the people went through without elaborating on causes etc. And there is plenty of starvation going on right now that we can help out with in the ways we feel that others should have in the past. mg

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 02:07 PM

There would songs I would like to see written, or if they exist, brought into light again.

1. Quaker response
2. Seminole (??) Indian response
3. "Little Miss Kennedy", a little girl who took it upon herself to feed the starving
4.

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 26 Jan 12 - 10:57 PM

I am workikng on other things right now but if someone had an interest in the topic and wanted to go through this and other threads and compile a list that would be great. mg

Subject: RE: Potato Famine CD
From: ollaimh
Date: 27 Jan 12 - 06:02 PM

flora is compleytely bignorant of the actual history, she's regurgitating the imperial bull.

the "over population" was the result of the english government replacing gaelic land laws with english ones and hence pushing the mass of the population unto the worst land while the "landlord"--all conected to the english capitalist/military elite grew and exported food for profit.

during the famine in ireland there was enough food exported to feed ireland three times over--for profit.

in the seventeen hundredsthere was s imilar crop faliure in ireland and the government banned the export of food from the island and presto==no famine. in the eighteen hundreds the laissez gfaire capitalist philosophy of empire had tasked hold and the britishwould not sacrifice any profit for help to the an duanaire--the dispossessed. thus starvation and ethnic cleansing on a mass scale.

i read a recent history of the famine by a university professor from liverpool who said that woodward-smiths assessement has been proven over and over by modern demographic studies, in spite of decades of attempts to discredit that first real history of the genocide in ireland. she concluded that the fact was that millions of citizens of the richest and most powerfull empire on earth starved or were displaced, all of whom lived with in hundreds of miles of the capital. damning truth.

the revisionists are much like nazi revisionists. they try to reduce the numbers by not counting those who died in the forced relocation. at leat a million-probably twice that. as if those displaced by famine who were uprooted from all economic and social support and died of disease were not famine deaths.

to put it in perspective thats exactly what the nazi's say about jewish deaths in the holoucoust. that most died of disease not gassing, so they don't count. ignoring the facts that all the circumstances that led to thier deaths were crested by the nazi camps and death machines.

the truth remains that god made the blight, but england made the famine