The Great Hunger

In the early 1840s, the population of Ireland was something over 8 million people.

Then came famine, starvation, and the attendant mass emigration. That population figure has never been equaled since. Today, after 170 years, the Irish population has recovered to about 6.2 million (4.5 million in the republic and something under 1.8 million in Northern Ireland.)

This subject is very interesting to me because the exodus of the Irish to many parts of the world, including my own country, had such a dramatic affect on our history.

This story will take more than one post. The main source for most of my facts is the collected newspaper stories, recorded oral histories, and official documents of the time which have been collected by the National Library of Ireland, Dublin, in a rather startling book called The Irish Famine: A Documentary History. To read this book and look at the reproductions of the old documents and read the first-person accounts is to almost hear voices speaking from a century long past.

I will keep this first post confined to the introduction of the circumstances that led to the Great Potato Famine in Ireland.

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"The Irish famine of 1845-52 was the greatest catastrophe in recorded Irish history. It was caused by the repeated failure of the potato crop, the main food source of the poorer classes. The failure resulted in hunger, starvation, and ultimately death or emigration for a quarter of the population. One million died and over a million emigrated. The emigrants formed the main basis for the Irish diaspora, in Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia." [From the above mentioned book, The Irish Famine.] (Diaspora means the dispersion of large numbers of people from their homeland.)

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Irish society in the early 1840s was mostly rural and agricultural, with 7 of the 8 million inhabitants living in rural areas, largely sharecroppers on tiny plots, growing their own sustenance, living on the very edge.

In rural Ireland were three classes or categories of people. First were the landlords who owned the often hereditary estates; second were the tenet farmers who grew the crops and paid a share to the landlords; third, the farm laborers. This last were most often living at a bare subsistence level. Their main staple food was the potato. They were given a plot of land on the main farm to grow their potatoes. Potatoes were the mainstay of their diet and often the ONLY item on their diet for some time until they could slaughter a pig or the like. Potatoes were mostly stored in lofts over the main room of their small house. Potatoes would last until June, having been harvested in the previous September. So there were a couple months when they subsisted on mostly Indian Corn (maize) and what other vegetables or meat they could obtain. Summer was a time of hunger for the "peasant" farm laborers. There was nothing held in reserve. They lived from hand to mouth from one crop to the next. If the potato crop were ever to fail, the result would be catastrophic on this class.

In 1845, the potato crop failed.

Learning Irish: Why there are so many Irish in Boston

Of the islands of the world, Greenland is the largest.

Great Britain is number nine and Ireland is Number 20.

Unless you don't count Greenland, then GB is 8th and Ireland is 19th. (There is some dispute over Greenland really being 3 smaller islands under all that ice. Don't let it bother you; Ireland will always be 19th in my mind.

This post is not about islands, but if I had started out with corks and rebellion, you wouldn't have read this far down.

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First, there is a difference between nationalism and republicanism. Nationalism is simply identifying with one's land and culture and being proud of it. Patriotism, even. On the other hand, republicanism is the desire to be an independent country, a "republic," technically, but independence is at the core.

One can be a happy nationalist and still be a part of a larger union. One would think.

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The Act of Union of 1801 (I am writing this by memory, so please point out any inaccuracies) created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This is not something I learned in any American school, more's the pity. I had to learn it from you from before on this blog, or from researching posts for this blog - the origins of my meager knowledge are murky at best.

Be that as it may (you probably weren't taught that much about the Missouri Compromise or the Kansas-Nebraska Act, either) there was a union created between Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Of that we may be sure, just as sure as Marley was dead at the beginning of A Christmas Carol.

Some say (some Irish say) that union was not completely and willingly two-sided, that they ("they" being the Irish) were sold out by bribe-taking turncoat politicians. Well, you know how it goes. Always the sour grapes from a minority. No one can say Ireland didn't benefit greatly, in many ways, over the years.

I need to go back to researching now to find out why Great Britain wanted a union with Ireland. The last time I did that, I got sidetracked by Henry VIII. That won't happen this time.

Probably there is more to come on the subject of Ireland. Didn't get very far this time.

Finn McCool

I received some books for Christmas, as usual, and the one I am reading first is Malachy McCourt's History of Ireland (told as a series of stories of Irish legends and heroes, along with more modern history, all mixed in with the personal tidbits that make the McCourt boys' tales so interesting to read.

Malachy is Frank's younger brother, as those of you who are familar with Frank's "Angela's Ashes" are well aware. His writing style is every bit as captivating as Frank's, I think, and I already recommend Malachy's book to you even though I have only just started reading it.

One of the very first ancient stories that Malachy recounts in the book is of the legendary giant warrier Fionn mac Cumaill. Here I must tell you that Malachy McCourt relies heavily on the writings of the great Irish storyteller Peig Sayers for these early stories I am reading now. Peig was a fantastic storyteller of the early legends, especially in the oral tradition (as was McCourt's own father, by the way) but she never learned English and so her stories, related by Malachy, are directly from the Irish, of necessity. As a result, this wee American brain is mentally translating Fionn mac Cumaill as "Finn McCool", though McCourt never does. I take this liberty because McCourt mentions the legend of the "construction" of the wondrous "Giant's Causeway" in County Antrim which stretches out into the sea towards Scotland. I have heard of this legend before, but the Irish hero was called Finn McCool in the version I have read. So I make the assumption the names are the same, the latter simply anglicized. Please correct me if you disagree with my assumption.

I realize that Irish history may seem off-topic for this blog, Ireland not being part of the United Kingdom now, but if you know me you will understand my collateral interest and forgive my digression. (McCool happens to be of Northern Ireland, though, at least the Causeway story.)

Anyway, the story goes that the visiting giant from Scotland came upon Fionn mac Cumaill, who had disguised himself as a baby. An 18-foot baby, but a baby nonetheless. And the "baby" bit the giant and caused the Scottish visitor to calculate that if an Irish baby were so fearsome, he had no further desire to meet the adult beings of the Isle, and ran back into the sea, pursued hotly by Fionn mac Cumaill, who was throwing rocks at the giant as the chase progressed. Legend says one of these rocks missed the giant and landed in the sea, becoming the Isle of Man.

I don't know.

But the stories are fascinating.

I am reading about Deirdre now.

"One day when the girl had grown into quite a beauty, her tutor was flaying a calf on the snow-covered ground. Nearby a raven was drinking the blood that had collected in the snow.

"Those three colors remind me of the man I would love, a man I see in my dreams," Dierdre told her nurse. "He has hair as black as the raven, cheeks as red as the calf's blood, and skin as white as the snow."

"There is such a man," said the nurse, and he lives in the household of [king] Connor. He is Naoise, son of Uisneach..."

I love it. I can't wait.