Remembering An Gorta Mor

An Irish-American, are yet? This Wednesday, as you are settling down to a pint of Guinness and joining in yet another rendition of "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" (that most American of "Irish" songs) you might do well to remember how it was that you came to drink in an American bar in the first place. What does St. Patrick's Day mean to you? Is it just an excuse to dye the Chicago River green, to get drunk, to wear green plastic hats, to go to parades?

In the United States, St. Patrick's Day is much more than a religious remembrance of a saint who lived over 1,500 years ago who drove the snakes from Ireland (rumor) and converted much of the island to Christianity (fact). Instead it has become a celebration of all things Irish, of a nation whose emigrants to this country produced, at least in part, over 45 million Irish-Americans living today. We sing of the "old country," talking lovingly about the light mists that caress her rolling green fields, dancing to her vibrant music traditional and modern, and celebrating this wondrous "Isle of Saints and Scholars." As we raise a pint in modern America, we focus on the joys of being Irish and do not remember what it is to be hungry.

Finally, the Ireland of today is not the stereotypical Ireland of perfectly thatched homes, leprechauns, fairies and gold at the end of the rainbow. Nor is it the dank, gloomy and oppressive place that some writers portray. Rather, this "Celtic Tiger" is rearing its head and roaring at long last with an economic growth. It is a nation that takes ancient forms and smartly and beautifully updates them to light the end of the 20th century. It is a nation that, in the North, is finally nearing a peaceful resolution to hundreds of years of conflict with the descendants of English invaders. Yet Ireland, in her victory over poverty, famine, and war, does not forget what it means to be hungry. There is a reason that Irish relief organizations often headline efforts to combat famine in Africa and Asia. They haven't forgotten. Nor should we.

An Gorta Mor, the Great Hunger (1845-1849), the worst in a series of famines that ravaged Ireland, was a period of great trial for a people already deeply affected by 800 years of English occupation and tyranny. Most had been reduced to lives of subsistence farming. English laws and landlords did not allow the trade of traditional Irish goods and grazed their own cattle upon large chunks of Irish land that they now "owned." Catholics were discriminated against, tenants were evicted, and the Irish language was forcibly superceded by English.

The potato blight which killed crops throughout Ireland was the final movement in this first symphony of sorrows, to be joined later by Civil War and the Troubles. Potatoes were all that was left for most Irish people to eat. By 1845, potatoes had become the sole staple of the Irish diet. When they were gone, there was no food available to the poor. They could not afford anything else, and it was knowingly not given to them, prompting some historians to label the Famine not as an unfortunate calamity but as a genocide.

Between 1841 and 1851, the Irish population dwindled from 8 million to 6 million, these numbers driven equally by starvation and emigration. How much greater the indignity that the million who died mostly did so in anonymity, in unmarked mass graves along roadsides and near the coast. During the winter of 1847, the worst year of the Great Famine also known as "Black '47," one such mass grave, on a beach in County Mayo, was dug in the sand because the survivors were too weak to break the frozen ground.

Those who were able to come to the United States, Canada, and Australia often sailed on tightly packed, disease-ridden "coffin ships," aptly named as a large percentage of their passengers never made it to the shores they sought. Even more who survived the grueling Atlantic crossing felt earth again only to be soon buried within it. The island of Grosse Ile, used as a quarantine site for incoming immigrants to Quebec, today holds the graves of thousands. Those who did survive faced widespread and serious discrimination and hatred.

Nevertheless, the Irish finally "made it" in America, eventually becoming CEO's of Fortune 500 companies, major league ballplayers, Senators and representatives, Supreme Court Justices, even President of the United States. Just like it isn't American to "pull up the life boats" for future immigrants, it isn't American, nor is it Irish, to forget our past, to forget some of the forces that drove us to this country in the first place, and thereby remember and aid those who now are in need of what we once needed.

It is no accident that around the 150-year anniversary of the worst year of the famine, "Black '47," famine memorials began to spring up all over America. In fact, former Irish President, Mary Robinson, dedicated one right here in Cambridge. We Irish-Americans have a responsibility to our ancestors, to those who suffered needlessly during the famine, to those who left their loved ones forever waiting at the docks to pursue new lives in a New World, to put our perceptions right, to help spread peace and freedom in the land that birthed our grandparents and throughout the world, and to remember, to always remember.

This Tuesday night, the day before you go out on the town to celebrate with a pint or three, whether you are of Irish stock or not, you might consider attending a vigil in memory of the million Irish famine dead, as well in remembrance of all those similarly affected the world over today. Held at the new Boston Irish Famine Memorial, at Washington and School Streets on the Freedom Trail, the 6 p.m. candlelight vigil is a first step. Yours truly, a descendant of fisherman and farmers who came from the remote reaches of northwestern Country Mayo and who is about to graduate from Harvard will be there. Will you?.

Christa M. Franklin '99 is a social studies concentrator in Currier house. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.