Lyr Req: songs about the Irish Potato Famine

Subject: Irish Potato Famine
From: GUEST,vienna
Date: 16 Oct 03 - 11:00 PM

I have a colleague who is looking for songs pertaining to the Potato Famine. We'd love some help.

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: artbrooks
Date: 16 Oct 03 - 11:08 PM

Go to the top of the page, enter 'famine' in the DT, uncheck Forum, and 'Search. You should get a good number.

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Glen Reid
Date: 16 Oct 03 - 11:46 PM

I wrote a song many years ago called My Green Valleys.
The basis for the song, was the "coffin Ships" leaving famine stricken Ireland, headed for the new world.
Its been recorded over 30 times, mostly by Irish groups, such as, The Wolfetones and the Irish Rovers.
But the origional recording was by John Devlin of Brannigan's Boys, of which I was a part of, way back then.
Cheers, Glen

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Peg
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 12:07 AM

Killkelly is a famous one...

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: mg
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 12:41 AM

Glen, could you post the words...

Praties they grow small is a great song.

mg

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: DonMeixner
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 12:42 AM

There was a blight on the potato crop. Was never, ever a famine in Ireland.

Don Meixner

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 01:03 AM

Praties They Grow Small a fine song, but it was copyrighted several years before the great famine. As a comic song, no less.

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 11:05 AM

Why didn't they eat corn or sqush or.....

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Ringer
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 11:11 AM

cake?

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 11:12 AM

Reminds me of the late Queen Marie Antoinette:
"Why do the people rebel?"
"They don't have bread, Your Majesty."
"So why don't they eat cake?"

Wilfried

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Amos
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 11:39 AM

Doing a google search on +famine +potato +Ireland will bring up some interesting historical evidence -- newspapers and sketches fromt he period -- that indicates there was in fact a famine, and death from starvation was very much a risk for large numbers of people -- especially tenant farmers whose primary crop failed from the murrain or blight.

I posted a couple of links earlier to this thread but they got lost en route, it seems.

A

Subject: Lyr Add: BLACK '47 (Jeff Porterfield)
From: jeffp
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 12:20 PM

I, too, have written a song about the Hunger. Here are the lyrics:

Black '47
© 2003 Jeff Porterfield


Potatoes rotting in the ground
Starvation's curse is all around
Black 47's come and gone

Mothers laying down to die
Babies at their breasts so dry
Black 47's come and gone

People eating grass to live
The land has got no more to give
Black 47's come and gone

The landlord still must have his rent
Our hearts are sore, our bodies spent
Black 47's come and gone

BRIDGE

Oh God, please hear my plea
My back is bent with misery
I try, but I cannot see
A way to get beyond
This time of hunger,
I sit and I wonder
Do You really listen or
Are we alone?

New corpses greet the rising sun
We'll all be dead before it's done
Black 47's come and gone

Who will be the next to die?
Lord above please hear our cry
Black 47's come and gone

A ship is waiting at the quay
Your only hope's to sail away
Black 47's come and gone

Black 47 has come and gone


You can PM me your email addy for a PDF of the tune with chords.

jeffp

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Nerd
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 12:55 PM

The evidence Amos mentions does not get to the bottom of Don's post. No one denies that people starved to death in Ireland. What is hotly debated is the meaning of the term "famine." In Ireland there were wealthy people and there was wealth owned by absentees. If that wealth had been redistributed it is likely that a widespread starvation would not have occurred. So the question is: was this a famine, or was it a society where some people were economically disadvantaged to the point where they starved? This is a valid question to ask of any situation labelled a "famine."

"Kilkelly" covers years 1860-1892, significantly after the famine, but it does refer to smaller outbreaks of the fungus.

"Skibberreen" is more directly related to the famine.

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: GUEST,The Burren Ranger
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 01:21 PM

There was no 'Famine' in Ireland. There was a 'Great Hunger '(Black '47 and '48) which reduced the population from 8 to 4 million. The tenants (with only the potato to live on) harvested the food which had to delivered to their English landlords...to poach a fish in the "Queen's Rivers, or steal a loaf of bread to feed a starving child meant banishment to Australia or van Dieman's Land. The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham Smith is one excellent account of this tragic event in Irish History.
TBR

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 01:30 PM

Check out Big Tim's book ; One Green Hill

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: InOBU
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 02:33 PM

One may read the many books writen by Dr. Christeen Kinealy which prove through hard numbers that Ireland was exporting enough food to feed all her people and more, she is a professor of history at the University of Liverpool. Cheers Larry

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: DonMeixner
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 02:55 PM

There records of ships manifests that sailed out of Irish Ports to England carrying many metric tons of wheat, corn, barley, mutton and beef. The native born tenant farmers were allowed to grow potatos for their own consumtion.

The starvation goes into a greater concern than just the lack of food or a potato blight. It was caused as much by British Inheritance laws as they applied to Ireland as anything else.

When a father died he had to leave his property equally to all his sons. Rather than his first born which was the custom
A famer with four sons would see his 10 acres become 2.5 per child with in one generation. If each son had 2 sons, his property became 1.2 acres in one generation. 10n profitable acres becam four subsistance farms in one generation. In two generations with out the ability to raise a crop and pay taxes on 1.25 acres the property was taken over by the crown or sold to the local lord and the farmers displaced or turned into tenant farmers.

Nothing is ever as simple as "There once was a famine in Ireland...."

Don

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Amos
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 03:00 PM

I will not dispute that the risk of starvation was aggravated by grimly oppressive economic policies. The distinction, to those who starved to death, is academic -- it felt like famine and in the crazy transition between medieval feudalism and capitalism there were no efficient means of correction that could fix things, except individual landowners who were sometimes willing to step forward and exercise compassion if they could afford it. That varied with individual landowners, to be sure.

A

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 03:53 PM

Penni McLaren Walker has written a song (which I sing) about the dispossession of the cottiers. I've just realised I don't currently have the words in electronic format, but I will post them if anyone's interested.

Kitty

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 04:02 PM

Although it's been sung a lot in certain circles, The Fields of Athenry says a lot about the famine.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: InOBU
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 04:03 PM

One thing that must be remembered, through out eastern Europe, the farmers lived on potatos and grew money crops. In the same years, and in years before, when the blight hit in those nations (and this was a more or less modern world where English papers carried political news of those nations) the ports were closed to force landlords to use the money crops to feed the peasent farmer. Britan did not do this, knowing that this would lead to mass starvation.
Cheers
Larry

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 04:47 PM

Is every one here who is reading and lamenting about the famine, which wiped out most of my great-grandmother's family, at least clicking on the hunger site, if not actually contributing to charities. With no trouble or cost to ourselves, we can at least provide a cup of food, pitiful as it is, to a starving person. mg

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 04:56 PM

to you all spitting hairs above, a famine is a famine and there was a famine, that it involved more than just the failure of one crop is both true and beside the point. there was a famine and there are songs about it. this academic crap is an insult to all who died of hunger, disease and exposure, not to mention those who died on the coffin ships on the way over. I've heard other idiots state that 'there were a lot of Irish who made money during those days...' as if that in any way mitigated the suffering of the many. Like saying there were Jews who profitted during the Holocaust. So there were. So what? The Irish died just the same of hunger, cholera, typhus, etc. brought on by the potato blight and exacerbated by economic and political institutions, religious bigotry and intolerance, racism, classism, and just plain bad luck. to blithely pronounce 'was never, ever a famine in Ireland' is more than just bullshit ignorance. though it may be, narrowly speaking, in a dictionary meaning, 'true' it is inflammatory and 'false'.
shame on you. the person asked for songs about this period. you obviously understood the request and chose to 'politicise' or 'erudise' (new word!) instead of respond. a big GFY from me to you

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: DonMeixner
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 05:23 PM

I dispute that there was a famine. I don't dispute that there was a mass starvation. A famine is a monumental lack of all types of food. There was more than enough food to feed the nations of Ireland and England. People starved not because a single root crop failed but because of a government enforced mass starvation by the policies of the Crown. I also don't dispute the transportation and death in the coffin ships of millions of Irish people. Nor do I dispute the criminallity of it all.

Since you quoted me Bill, I will tell I am not ignorant of what happened in Ireland 150 years ago and it is I hope very inflamatory and it most certainly not false. People starved in the worse conditions imagineable because of the actions of a government who claimed to be the most compassionate and enlightened of the age. The story of the starvation was so well known and wide spread that members of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma sent money to buy bread to feed the starving Irish children while they themselves were never far from hunger.

Strictly speaking there was never a famine there was plebty of food that many, many people were not allowed to eat.

Vienna, go into the data base and look for "The Mother's Kiss", that may be song that will interest you.

Don

Subject: Lyr Add: MY GREEN VALLEYS (Glen Reid)
From: Glen Reid
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 09:59 PM

Here is the lyric for "My Green Valleys" as requested by Mary G.
Cheers, Glen

Oh the seagulls are calling, the wind is in the sail
And she's fast moving out to the sea
On a ship bound for St. Johns, three thousand miles away
A human cargo, my comrades and me

It hurts me to think of, the things I left behind
Though the famine, has blackened the land
And to look now for something, that I may never find
Is a problem, thats now close at hand

    Farethee well green valleys, God keep you the same
    If in only my mind, you'll be
    I am sailing dark waters, to far Americay
    And never more, my green valleys to see

Oh the fever,s a ragin' and the winds have died away
And our journey, may no longer be
Though the plague is a shadow, that lingers night and day
Former thoughts of green valley, I see

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: GUEST,Chris B (born again scouser)
Date: 18 Oct 03 - 09:38 AM

Check this Shane McGowan song out:

'The Dunes'
mailto:[e-mail]

Mind you, if you're going to be fussy about your diet...

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: InOBU
Date: 18 Oct 03 - 10:57 AM

Guest mg.. very meaningful suggestion and I add my endorcement, could you provide a URL? All the best, Larry

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Big Tim
Date: 18 Oct 03 - 01:28 PM

Dick, have you the origins of the "Praties They are Small" song? I had never heard this as "comic", especially as sung by Mary O'Hara, and Ron Kavana: but you never know!

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Gareth
Date: 18 Oct 03 - 04:29 PM

Amos is correct on this - Grain etc., was still being exported at the time of the famine.

But please hold in mind that this dogmatic economic policy applied to the whole of the United Kingdom, and effected the working class in England, Wales, and Scotland as well.

Please also hold to mind that the results of the "Great Famine" resulted in economic and political reforms in the UK.

What could/would not be changed was the system of land tenure in Ireland.

Co-incidently Samual Plimsole's attempts to aplie some safety standards to shipping and health and diet of passengers came as a result of the coffin ships. (Yeah alright an oversimplification)

Gareth

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: DonMeixner
Date: 18 Oct 03 - 04:37 PM

There was a famine in Ireland in the late 1840's, millions died because of their class and economic limits.

I will not dispute the starvation and death or argue hotly with any one over something we all agree on because we are splitting hairs based on the definition of one single word.

   Don

Subject: Lyr Add: POOR BROKEN FARMER DAN O'HARA (?)
From: mg
Date: 18 Oct 03 - 08:00 PM

I don't have a url for the Praties....there is another one that has a very jolly tune but very sad words...a man from Connemara who sells matches....

Oh it's poor I am today for God gave and took away
And he left without a home for Dan O'Hara
In the frost and snow I stand with my matches in my hand
Poor broken farmer Dan O'Hara

Chorus (I probably have words wrong)

Acushla ...machree won't you buy a box from me
And you'll have the prayers of Dan from Conemmara
You can buy them cheap and low buy a box before you go
From poor broken farmer Dan O'Hara

For 40 years or more I had acres by the score and the grandest land you ever laid a plow to
but the landlord came you know and he laid my home so low and here I am today brokenhearted.

In the year of 54 sure misfortune was at my door
And the poor old wife and I were sadly parted
We were scattered far and wide and the children starved and died
And here I am today broken hearted

In the frost and snow I stand and the shadow of God's hand
Lies heavy on the brow of Dan O'Hara
But with the grace of God above I will find the ones I love
And the joys I left behind in Connemara

---

Note this chorus:
"A Chusla Geal Mo Chroi
Won't you buy a box from me
And you will have the prayers of Dan from Connemara
I'll sell them cheap and low
Buy a box before you go
From the broken hearted farmer Dan O'Hara".
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: boglion
Date: 19 Oct 03 - 06:57 PM

"The City of Chicago" recorded by Christy Moore on "Ride On" is a particularly poignant starvation song. I'd also recommend "Kilkenny" as previously mentioned.

By the way David Blaine has ended his 44 day famine this evening in London.

Terry

Subject: Lyr Add: GIVE ME THREE GRAINS OF CORN, MOTHER
From: Mickey191
Date: 19 Oct 03 - 11:50 PM

Mary , Thanks for that great song. I'd forgotten about it-My Mother used to play it when I was a kid.

Just three verses of a touching Poem about "The Famine"

   GIVE ME THREE GRAINS OF CORN, MOTHER

Give me three grains of corn Mother,
only three grains of corn;
It will keep the little life I have
Till the coming of the morn.
I'm dying of hunger and cold, Mother,
Dying of hunger and cold;
And half the agony of such a death
My lips have never told.

The Queen has lands and gold Mother,
The Queen has lands and gold,
While you are forced to your empty breast
A skeleton abe to hold,
A babe that is dying of want Mother,
As I am dying now,
With a ghastly look in his sunken eye,
And famine upon his brow.

What has poor Ireland done Mother,
What has poor Ireland done,
That the world looks on, and sees us starve,
Perishing one by one?
Do the men of England care not, Mother,
The great men and the high,
For the suffering sons of Erin's Isle,
Whether they live or die?      

Amelia Blandford Edwards

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Nerd
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 01:43 AM

Bill Kennedy,

Don't put words in our mouths or motivations behind our words. No one was trying to shamefully mitigate the sufferings of people who died. Some are just offended by the use of the word famine because it covers up the political nature of the starvation. People did not starve because of a natural disaster, as "famine" suggests, but because others would not let them eat. If people starve to death in the US (and they do), does it follow that we have a 'famine' here? No, we have a system of social stratification that keeps some rich and others hungry. This is the same with Ireland in the 1840s, except that there the group who fell below starvation level was suddenly magnified to horrific proportions.

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 02:49 AM

I always believed that the cause of the famine was a fatal shortage of potatoes, as a basic food for the peasants and poor town people.
The same happened in my home country at the same time and lead to a wave of emigration to the US. Since my family lived on rich soil with enough wheat and cattle we weren't affected, but there are heartbreaking reports of the remote and mountainous parts of my country.

Wilfried

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: vectis
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 08:36 AM

The Wolfetones song "The Great Hunger" is a good 'un. It really captures the bewilderment and desperation of those caught up in the situation.

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: mooman
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 10:48 AM

"Famine" is simply a word derived from the Latin fames meaning "hunger" and, knowing the history well, I have no problem with the use of it.

A particular favourite song of mine concerning this period is "Edward Connors" (sometimes Conners) which can be heard on Dolores Keane/John Faulkner's "Farewell to Eirinn".

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Amos
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 11:16 AM

SYLLABICATION: fam·ine
PRONUNCIATION:   fmn
NOUN: 1. A drastic, wide-reaching food shortage. 2. A drastic shortage; a dearth. 3. Severe hunger; starvation. 4. Archaic Extreme appetite.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old French, from faim, hunger, from Vulgar Latin *famna, from Latin fams.


If the blight had not decimated the potato crop, would the deaths from starvation occurred? Were people starving from politically-denied foods prior to the beginning of the blight? It seems clear that there was mass starvation caused by crop failure and a lack of political compassion, will, or muscle to rectify it.

A

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: Nerd
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 02:21 PM

Yes, all this is granted. The point is that it is a complex question, not a simple one. When people try to simplify it down to "it was a famine, and if you say differently you are desecrating the memories of dead people" they are guilty of over-simplification. If we had a sudden failure of one crop in the US today and a whole population starved while the wealthy remained well-fed and indeed got wealthier, history would not be kind enough to call it an example of famine.   It would be an example of the failure of a government to fulfill its obligations. So I agree that a crop failure was part of the story, and even that looked at in one way it could be seen as a famine. The point is there are other ways in which people look at it, and they are justified in doing so.

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 05:34 PM

Big Tim:
Try OVER THERE at the Levy collection.

I suspect that the song was quite a bit older than the publication date, but it was published in 1844.

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: GUEST,Grab
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 07:17 PM

Don, "It was caused as much by British Inheritance laws as they applied to Ireland as anything else." I'd heard that the inheritance laws of splitting the land between all the sons was an Irish thing - I'd never heard of it being a law imposed on the Irish by the British. This link seems to say the same. Any info? Incidentally (to add another musical aside), Show of Hands' song "Man of War" is about a (Dorset) man serving in the Navy because the newly-split farm isn't large enough to support his family.

Using Google, which knows all... :-) Guest TBR, this link says 8.2m to 6.6m. Also note that many Irish emigrated to Britain for work in the new factories (as indeed did many English people, who were also suffering from the potato blight, and from a coinciding cholera epidemic). This link puts the Irish population of Liverpool as 22%.

Oh, and (first link again) "Between 1815 and 1914 about 16.4 million emigrated from Britain. About 11 million went to the USA, 2.55 million to Canada, 2 million to Australia and New Zealand, and 850,000 to South Africa. Of these 16.4 million about 4 million were from Ireland." Coffin ships were not exclusively the preserve of the Irish.

Graham.

PS. Please don't make me out to be a typical Brit making excuses. The thought of what the landowners did makes my blood boil. But the English landowners were doing it to their tenants on the other side of the Irish Sea as well, and not all landlords were English in any case which kind of twists the knife worse. It ain't just as simple as the "Brits screwing the Irish again".

Subject: RE: Irish Potato Famine
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 07:42 PM

the lesson in the potato blight and subsequent starvation that followed is the complete reliance on a single crop with very little genetic variety. The blight would have had little effect in say Peru where there are 30 different varieties of potatoes.
The potato was ideal for Irelands soil and climate, but since the entire crop came from only a small gene pool there was not enough variety to withstand the blight - the same thing happened with corn rust in the US in the 70's and the English coffee plantations
(19th century? in asia - cant remember exactly where and when) but it led to the popularity of Tea instead.

the same risk happens with modern grain crops - Monsanto and others go around collecting seeds from farmers all over the world (which have 1000s of years of human selection) and then were left with a few so called super grains that may have some advantages but little genetic diversity.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about the Irish Potato Famine
From: mg
Date: 04 Feb 12 - 12:31 AM

I came across something about this gene pool. Apparently they tried very hard to get seed potatoes..both before and during the famine..from other places..other countries even..to get a broader gene pool. mg

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about the Irish Potato Famine
From: GUEST,Iona
Date: 04 Feb 12 - 12:41 AM

Is the song "Save the Land" about the potato famine, or about the revolutions? I never have been able to understand who was supposed to be 'he' in the song, or why all the people in 'his' land were starving and dying. I'm assuming it's about the revolutions, but I can't be sure.

(Hear it Here)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about the Irish Potato Famine
From: ollaimh
Date: 04 Feb 12 - 12:53 PM

i wonder why any one but a racist woud be splitting hairs over the famine?

it was genocide by the internationally accepted definition. the conditions of the famine and depopulation were created by concerted and long term british governemt policy and when the results of those policies became deathly clear they did nothing, if you read the news papers of london they are full of letters and editorials aboput how this happy coincidence was clearing the land for more efficient ecomonic use. meaning use by the conquerors corporations. the british elite at that time was committed to the heartless and merciless polcy of laissez faire capitalism.hence they were happy to force starvation and immigration. this pjilosophy is the same murderous philosphy now called neo conservatism. greed and corporate valkues over any human needs.

they led a campaign to ptivatize water in south america and south africa resilting in a massive increase in water born disease especially for children.(its easier to deliver water for profit than remove waste, so the corporations stopped doing the sewar upkeep the old system used to do).

finallyn i ask why split these hairs? i see no reason other than racism and support for imperialism in sheeps clothing

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about the Irish Potato Famine
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 04 Feb 12 - 05:10 PM

here is the most beautiful song

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=52094

for some reason I can't make clickies on this machine.

By Brendan Nolan..about Grosse Isle

I think he has been mentioned in various threads..I am trying to make a spreadsheet with everything on it. We may have a slot or two left if anyone is a descendent and has a song with no copywrite issues and can get it professionally recorded. Nothing political. mg