Dear old Skibereen

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….

In Scotland, where anti irish racism has never been acknowledged never mind tackled the opening of carfin monument to the famine victims with theTaoiseach Berti Ahern had to be posponed due to the controversy it would cause around a rangers and celtic game.

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

 

Blantyre Explosion

I heard the Christy Moore version of this old scottish song about the Blantyre Mining Disaster which took place on October 22, 1877 where 207 miners died and 92 widows made, and 250 fatherless children. I had never heard of this explosion yet, this town is just next to my home city Glasgow till i heard this song. Tears came down my face first time i heard this..

Dunno there is something about this song that really touches me, makes me think of all us ordinary people that get fucked over by a system that reduces us to a means of production or reproduction, or a wastage underclass and how precarious our existances are within that set up…

It is songs like this that gives us an insight into the real lifes and emotions of such events that can alas only be generally put into statistics for us to recount such is the magnitude of the problems of this world….

I came across the chords for it and have been practicing it, i like to sing real songs about real people, and the real struggles that we all have to endure that rarely get noticed.

Anyway heres a great version by Luke Kelly and below are the lyrics..

By Clyde’s bonnie banks
as I sadly did wander
among the pit heaps
as evening grew high.
I spied a young maiden
all dressed in deep mourning
a weeping and wailing
with many a sigh.
I stepped up beside her
and this I adressed her
“Pray, tell me fair maid
of your trouble and pain.”

Sobbing and sighing
at last she did answer
“Johnny Murphy, kind sir,
was my true lover’s name
twenty-one years of age
full of youth and good looking
to work down the mine
of high Blantyre he came.
The wedding was fixed
all guests were invited
that calm summer’s evening
my Johnny was slain.
The explosion was heard
all the women and children
with pale anxious faces
made haste to the mine.

When the truth was made known
the hills rang with their mourning.
Three hundred and ten
young miners were slain.
Now husbands and wives
and sweethearts and brothers
that Blantyre explosion
they’ll never forget.
And all you young miners
who hear my sad story
shed a tear for the victims
who were laid to their rest.”

 

Most realisitic prediction of Glasgow in 2020?

Read about this controversial  study undertook by thinktank demos on my bus journey to uni today in the Herald Newspaper. Predicting how Glasgow could be in 2020 if certain measures were taken. There was a diversity of visions, to me this one below stood out, based on my experiences as a Glaswegian. Indeed, i would say that most of this stuff has come to pass already here. I experience it every day living in a poverty striken scheme and then travelling to the bourgouise west end. The amount of people that go to Glasgow University who have never gone beyond the west end is astounding. The west end really is a horrible bourgiouse bubble but i wont go into rant mode today…

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1417677.0.0.php

Hard Glasgow is a quiet place. “Apart from the constant growl from police helicopters swirling overhead,” said Mr Hassan. It might, however, appeal to some more than Two-Speed Glasgow. Another caricature, this time of Glasgow’s notorious social divide.

“By 2020 economic and social divisions are so entrenched that Glasgow has become two cities living side by side in blissful ignorance of one another,” Mr Hassan wrote. “One half believes that everyone is middle class now’ while the other half is bedded down in social housing estates, existing in temporary jobs or on benefits. Both halves believe that they represent the majority experience of living in the city.

“With social mobility at an all time low, people are born in the same side as they die. There are little to no movements between the two cities and the politics of Glasgow are entirely conducted around the values of the richer half. The excluded have by-and-large opted out of voting, politics and notions of citizenship.

 Something that made me laugh out loud on the bus had to be this quote:

 Football is no longer so important – one sport among many. Glasgow has lost the chip on its shoulder, making up with Edinburgh and reaching peace with the wider world. It has even taken the step of apologising for its role in the British Empire, and brought an elderly but still lively Bill Clinton to the city to chair a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to mend sectarian disputes.”

and then this quality statement lol:

 There isn’t much room for sectarianism in another imagined city of 2020. That’s Kaleidescope Glasgow, where so many newcomers, even the English are welcome, have arrived that Old Firm rivalries are long gone – Partick Thistle is the top team.

lol I wish!

apparently this report cost £200k lol funded by Glasgow City Council and it pokes fun out of them.

You’ve gotta love the old academic fraternity with the audicity they have with how they justify thier careers! Still id rather give them money to come up with funny reports rather than Glasgow City Council who squander money on zilch…