Chances are, if you are of irish extraction in the UK or the States (47 million in the states are of irish extraction), a big part of your gene pool will have emigrated due to An Gorta Mór euphamistically known as the (potatoe famine)in the 1840s. You don’t know what the gaelic means do you? Neither do I, thats because our language was near destroyed too, but thats another subject we’ll be dealing with on this blog at some point….
This song Skibbereen captures this period well and we should pay heed to its message which has contemporary relevance to the famines we periodically witness in places such as Africa. All of which are social!!! The last verse demonstrates that it does not take Amartya Sen to suss this out and that the victims know fine well who the perpetrators of such holochausts are and that there shall be payback for these injustices.
Below are the lyrics and a version of the song that i found on youtube.
- Oh father dear, I often hear you speak of Erin’s isle
- Her lofty hills, her valleys green, her mountains rude and wild
- You say she is a lovely land wherein a saint might dwell
- So why did you abandon her, the reason to me tell.
- Oh son, I loved my native land with energy and pride
- Until a blight came on the land, my sheep, my cattle died
- My rent and taxes went unpaid, I could not them redeem
- And that’s the cruel reason why I left old Skibbereen.
- Oh well do I remember that bleak December day
- The landlord and the sheriff came to take us all away
- They set my roof on fire with their cursed foreign spleen
- I heaved a sigh and bade goodbye to dear old Skibbereen.
- Your mother too, God rest her soul, fell on the stony ground
- She fainted in her anguish seeing desolation ’round
- She never rose but passed away from life to immortal dream
- She found a quiet grave, me boy, in dear old Skibbereen.
- It’s well I do remember the year of forty-eight,
- When we arose with Erin’s boys to fight against our fate;
- I was hunted through the mountains as a traitor to the Queen,
- And that’s another reason why I left Old Skibbereen
- And you were only two years old and feeble was your frame
- I could not leave you with my friends for you bore your father’s name
- I wrapped you in my cota mor in the dead of night unseen
- I heaved a sigh and bade goodbye to dear old Skibbereen.
- Oh father dear, the day will come when in answer to the call
- All Irish men of freedom stern will rally one and all
- I’ll be the man to lead the band beneath the flag of green
- And loud and clear we’ll raise the cheer, Revenge for Skibbereen
June 21, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Being one-half to three-quarters Northern Irish and one-quarter Scottish, I really appreciate this post. My mother’s side of the family came over during the 1850s on a boat named The Baker’s Dozen, and apparently the potato famine was still going on. My father’s side of the family apparently came (rumor has it) in part when the Armada crashed into Ireland when the storms foiled their sea battle to conquer Britain. The Spaniards mixed with the local Irish, and legend has it that *that’s* how the Black Irish came about.:) My gut hunch is that me mother’s side also probably had a sizeable chunk of the Black Irish. I’ve heard that Irish folklore views the Black Irish as “fey” and very much in touch with the Otherworld. Don’t know if this is accurate, but it **WOULD** explain some things in my life.:)
June 24, 2007 at 10:23 am
Wow, which of the occupied 6 counties do you family originate from? Mine originate from county fermanagh from the town eineskillen.
My dads name Ciaran means ‘the dark one’, im a bit like that get tanned dead easily, was always a tanned kid which is quite something living in bonnie scotland.
Another intresting thing iver read is that celtic christianity before it was absorbed by roman catholicism was related to ebionitism, a sect of jewish christianity (jamesian as opposed to pauline) that survived in spain for a breif period. Noteable differences between pauline and jamesian christianity was dietry rules and they had a more traditional abrahamic conception of monotheisism (ie not trinitarian)..
Also, ive heard that there are celtic crosses in ireland that have ‘la ilaha ila la’ in kufic script (one of the many forms of arabic scripts kicking about before classical arabic script became standardised), the shahadah, decleration of faith “there is no God but Allah” dunno how true that is but it is intresting all these connections with spain that ireland seems to have had and heterodoxity. My spurious theory is that given the fact that celtic civilisation was a naval one and that spain was muslim for a long time and that christiandom (as in holy roman empire) was effectivly a trading block, perphaps trade took place between islamic spain and the celitic lands which of course meant ideas would have been traded along with commodities…..
With regards to potatoe famine, that was the first wave of a lot of irish immigrants that came here to glasgow, undoubtadly some of my family wouldve been part of that wave…
We have two football teams (or soccer), that tend to be divided upon ’sectarian’ lines, but it would be more accurate to state that they are divided upon ethnic and ideological viewpoints in Glasgow and its all tied to immigration.
As im sure you know the protestant dominant class in the north of ireland came from scotland originally, who were essentially colonisers to protect the intrests of the British empire in ireland by keeping down a potentially subversive large catholic population (monarchy trying to keep it proteststant
)…..
Well when you had the irish immigrants come over to glasgow because of the famine, they came to the most squalid conditions, they were treated as second class citizens, discriminated for jobs etc etc. Because of this celtic football club was formed by a monk (brother walfrid) as a means for raising funds for charitable purposes for the poor population of glasgow (who were predominantly irish).
Glasgow was a big ship building city as was belfast and immigrants (protestants since catholics would never get jobs in that sector in belfast)came over from belfast to work here in the ship building industry. Rangers football club come from a part of the city called ibrox, which is at the side of the clyde and a big ship building place and thus rangers developed a unionist anti catholic contingent part of thier support.
So that in a nutshell is the origins of the ‘old firm’ rivarly of celtic and rangers probably the most intresting example of the intermixing of sports and politics that has ever arisen.
To this day, you will still see irish tricolours at celtic crowds along with flags such as palestinian flags, basque flags, and other symbols of struggles that are simelar in nature to the irish republican struggle.
and in the rangers crowd we witness British union jacks and isreal flags,
fascinating stuff…
July 3, 2007 at 5:11 pm
The Skibereen song has haunted me since I was a child. My father was French but a lover of Irish music, and we had an album called “Songs and Marches of the Gael” that we wore down to scratches. “Skibbereen” has the most moving melody and words–it was great to google and find the words (some of which I couldn’t understand on the record) and discussion of the song. It wasn’t undtil I actually visited Ireland 10 years ago that I learned the true depth of the bestiality of the English to the Irish. Beautiful country, beautiful music. The above post on the religions was fascinating. Thanks for the site.