Bonzer Words!: The Potato Famine
Carolyn Hirsh writes about a harsh exodus from Ireland.
On Custom House Quay next to the River Liffey in Dublin a memorial to those who lost their lives in the potato famine of 1845-1849 has been erected. It's a group of six bronze statues of sad starving men and women, followed by a skinny dog. The statues were crafted by Dublin sculptor, Rowan Gillespie, and presented to the city in 1997.
The statues depict a desperate family walking alongside the river, perhaps to reach a ship that might carry them to another country to enable them to survive. The effect of the famine is strong in the thin bronze figures, taller than they should be, but so thin, with starvation cut across their faces and bodies. The elongated nature of the figures becomes more pronounced as their shadows lengthen during the hour I sit and look at them.
Their faces are despairing, beyond sad or angry. The three figures in front, two men and a woman, are looking up, toward heaven perhaps, but without hope. The woman in front has her hands crossed over the small bundle she carries clutched to her breast, crossed as if she is already in her coffin. The heads of the other three figures and the dog are bowed. They are too exhausted to hold themselves erect. Four of the figures carry bundles in their arms, a few possessions perhaps, while the figure at the back, a teenage boy, seems to stagger as he carries the body of a young girl across his shoulders. The feet of the six figures are bare and their clothes are rags.
More than one million people either died of starvation during the famine years or managed to emigrate to Australia, the United States or Canada. Two of my great-grandparents were among those who reached Australia, but others of my ancestors perished.
As I continue to sit, the sun sets and dusk descends on the scene. I've been there a long time watching the sad statues and thinking of my own roots. I'm not sure if I doze but the family suddenly seems to be approaching me.
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Their mother, Catherine, continues to lead the way. As they walk, bare-footed, more and more slowly, she prays to the saints that the remnants of her family will reach the tall-masted ships ahead and that there will be food when they arrive. She clutches the family bible to her breast as she silently prays to Jesus and Mary for the soul of her youngest, the beautiful Clare. Clare finally died yesterday, of starvation of course. She was the fourth of the nine children to succumb to the effects of the third year of famine brought about by the disease which killed the potato crop. Catherine's husband Joseph had been the first to go, since he'd refused to give up foraging for food once they'd eaten the cow and the two pigs, and had refused his share of the meagre portions of poor food available, leaving it for the children.
Her eldest son, Joseph, walking beside her, carries the heaviest bundle of their few poor possessions, gathered quickly after their eviction by the English police from their cottage a week before. Sean, the next son, carries two small bundles of the few things of value they possess. They haven't been able to sell the silver cross or the candlesticks in their village in County Cork, since no-one has either money or food, but perhaps if they can reach the ships the valuables might pay for their passage. Behind Sean, Patrick and Mary, the twins, who have always been inseparable, are walking close together and now Mary, staggering sometimes, keeps going by moving her feet in time with Patrick's.
A short way behind the rest of the family, Kevin, the youngest son, carries Clare's body over his shoulders. Although she isn't heavy, starvation has seen to that, Kevin staggers under the weight. But they must make sure that Clare has a proper Mass said and a burial in consecrated ground as soon as possible.
I stir myself and discover tears running down my face, possibly for my great grandparents Michael and Catherine Murphy, who managed to survive and reach Australia, or for the Irish people and the particular pain of the famine of the mid-nineteenth century.
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Carolyn writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
