Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: Thompson
Date: 14 Nov 14 - 03:11 AM

Cholera was endemic, or perhaps pandemic, in Ireland during the Famine; several of my great-great-grandfather's children died of it in Roscommon in the 1840s, Roscommon being the county hardest hit by the Famine. As in most famines, it was disease rather than hunger that killed people - both people and the animals, both animals in the fields and pets, so they say: cholera, smallpox, typhus and typhoid.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: Musket
Date: 14 Nov 14 - 03:02 AM

Give me a minute. I'm sure I can come up with a verse about Cheltenham races...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Nov 14 - 06:11 PM

Oddly similar to a U.S. Marine Corps rhyme from WWII or earlier:

Ten thousand gobs laid down their swabs
To lick one sick Marine.
Ten thousand more looked on and swore
'Twas the greatest fight they'd seen.

("Gob" = sailor.)

Useful for starting an interservice brawl.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Nov 14 - 01:00 PM

Google "New Basin Canal, New Orleans" for lots more information. I think the quote is actually a poem, and those few lines are all there is to it, but I haven't been able to find the source.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: paddymac
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 10:48 AM

Hey Kat - I was finally able to get into the site you posted. Nice historical overview. Thanks.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: WyoWoman
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 11:31 PM

ARt, have you ever been to Santa Fe, N.M.? It's also an American city that doesn't feel like it.

When I was little, I lived in Louisiana and my sister and I would go out in the back yard to dig "oil wells." (My dad worked in the oilfield. We figured if he could, we could.) We used soup spoons and always struck water at about three inches. I'd forgotten about that 'til I read this post.

WW

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 12:53 AM

Hmmm...it just worked for me, Paddymac. Here is the URL:

http://lsm.crt.state.la.us/education/irish3.htm

Pretty interesting isn't it? I hope you find the rest of the song!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: paddymac
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 12:33 AM

You guys are great! Brendy - that first link you put up is taken nearl verbatim from Coffey/Golway's "The irish In America", copyright by Disney in 1997, which is where I encountered the verse in my initial post. The second link provides good background material. I have a friend here (a Kerryman no less) who is chair of the Geography Dept. at the University. He gave an informal lecture a couple of years ago in which he talked about the preference for Irish workers in digging the canals in the NO area. An adult male slave in good health at that time was worth about $2,000 (wonder what that would translate to in today's dollars?). Thus no slave owner would risk his investment in a slave doing canal work when the "free" Irish were available. Nobody "owned" them, so nobody gave a damn if they died, which they did by the thousands. A sad and not widely known part of American history. Kat - I tried to follow your link, but got nowhere. I'll try it again later.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 12:00 AM

Well, Brendy, ya beat me to both of those links. I found several more which mention the song and quote just the part that you do, Paddymac. It's odd that they all only have that one quote. You'd think someone would have the whole song.

Working backwards from Brendy's first link, I was able to find the email addy and name of the person who put that up, and, who apparently has written a book or two. He is Timothy Daniel Kernan, Jr. at [e-mail]. Maybe he would be able to help you.

I also found one more site which was interesting at this blue clicky. There is also much more history of all peoples of early Lousiana at that site, if you work back through the links on that page.

Hmmmm....katscratchingherhead

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: Brendy
Date: 29 Aug 00 - 11:30 PM

So far, I haven't come up with any full set of lyrics, Paddy. There's a few articles out there, though, detailing The Forgotten Abuse of the Irish and this one about the builders of The New Casin Canal.

The search goes on.

B.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: Art Thieme
Date: 29 Aug 00 - 10:43 PM

One man could dig a canal in New Orleans if he only had a hoe.

That's sort of a joke, but not really. The water table is so high there that the graves have to be above ground. (No tall tale.) On tonights news was a story about the fact that most of the city is over 7 feet below sea level and, because of global warming, is in real danger of eventually being under water. Some want to build a strong wall around the entire city. New Orleans is the one city in America that truly feels like, when you're there, that you've left America.

A great unique city that we should save if we can.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: WyoWoman
Date: 29 Aug 00 - 10:38 PM

Wow! I thought this was a thread defining my idea of Heaven. Ten Thousand Big Micks. Whoo-eeee!

Oh. Oh, just plain ol' Micks.

nivver mind.

Actually, paddymac, I heard one story related to the Irish and that canal. The Irish were sent to dig it because disease was so rampant that there was about a 100 percent mortality rate and the landowners didn't want to waste their valuable "colored" slaves in that way. I don't know any more about it than that, but I have heard that there's an "Irish canal" in N'Orleans (that my ancestors helped build, allegedly, so I guess the mortality rate wasn't exactly 100 percent ...)

ww

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ten thousand Micks
From: paddymac
Date: 29 Aug 00 - 09:56 PM

Kee-kee-kee-christ. I haven't the slightest idea how in hell I managed to post so many replicates. My apologies to all. Joe, Dick, Susan, or anybody who knows how, please feel free to delete the duplicates. A Ha! I think I figured out the problem. I haven't had so much as a drop o the crature in three days. Got to rectify that sad situation.

Subject: Ten thousand Micks
From: paddymac
Date: 29 Aug 00 - 09:51 PM

I came across a verse from a song that relates to canal diggers in New Orleans. I ran key words and phrases through the forum/DT search but came up empty. If anbody out there in 'cat land knows any more about the song, I'd be grateful. Here's the one verse I have:

Ten thousand Micks, they swing their picks
To dig the new canal
But the choleray was stronger 'n they
And twice it killed them all.