A-Z Blogging Challenge - H is for 'Hunger' Memorials

Although the memorials in Ireland commemorating the tragic consequences of the potato blight in the 1840s are usually known as Famine Memorials, I am using the word Hunger here. Not just because it fits with H in the A-Z Challenge, but also because the Irish words ‘An Gorta Mór’ mean The Great Hunger.

Without going into all the politics of that time, suffice to say there was actually plenty of food in Ireland even when the potato crop failed for two consecutive years. However, foodstuffs were still being exported from Ireland to England during this period, and the price of any available food increased beyond the means of the poorest section of the population.

Landowners (often English) evicted non-payers of rent, who were then faced with the choice of entering the already crowded (and disease-ridden) workhouses, doing public work such as building roads for a pittance and relying on soup kitchens, or emigrating.

There are memorials to this tragic period in hundreds of towns and villages in Ireland. Sometimes they consist of a plaque showing where a workhouse once stood, or a Celtic cross in a graveyard, or by mass graves/burial pits where thousands of victims were buried.

In my novel Irish Echoes, historian Elliot Quinn is commissioned to write an article about some of the most evocative memorials. Professional photographer Rachel Pearse agrees to accompany him, despite the contentious issues between them. Here are some of the memorials they visited.

This sculpture on Customs House Quay in Dublin shows ragged and starving people trekking along the quay to board one of the ships which would take them to Britain, or to America, Canada, or Australia. Sadly, many of them did not survive the voyage.

 

Elliot and Rachel’s first stop was at Athy in County Kildare. The original workhouse there is now a hospital, and at the entrance is a sculpture carved from bog oak, named Famine Family. It represents a final hopeless embrace, since they knew they would not see each other again once they entered the workhouse.

The workhouse in Kilkenny has been converted to a shopping centre but in the Famine Memorial Garden outside the centre is a bronze sculpture. It shows two young brothers, John and Patrick Saul, who were abandoned by their parents at the docks in Dublin. They decided to walk back to their home in Clonmel, but after trekking over 70 miles, they sought refuge in the workhouse in Kilkenny.

 

The Ennistymon memorial was erected in 1995, in memory of the victims of the Great Hunger. It is located across from a deserted workhouse, where an estimated 20,000 Irish people died, and a mass graveyard for children, who perished and were buried without coffins.

The two grey stone slabs depict workhouse doors with large iron hinges. In front of one is a sculpture of a small barefoot boy with his hands raised as if imploring to be admitted. On the other is the head of his anguished mother, two clenched hands, and an inscription.

The inscription contains the words from a note that was pinned to the torn shirt of a barefoot orphan boy, who was left at the workhouse door on the freezing cold morning of February 25, 1848.

On the shore of Clew Bay in County Mayo is the National Famine Memorial, which depicts a “coffin ship” with skeleton bodies in the rigging. Coffin ships was a term used to describethe horrendously overcrowded boats which left Ireland with emigrants fleeing the famine in dire and unhygienic conditions 

A rough stone cross in the Doolough Valley in County Mayo commemorates a tragic event in in 1849 when people in the town of Louisburgh were starving. It was rumoured that if they walked 12 miles to Delphi Lodge where the council guardians were, they would be given food. The malnourished people set out on March 30th, 1849, in atrocious weather conditions, with wind and freezing rain, many walking barefoot and with only blankets or shawls for protection. When they eventually reached Delphi Lodge the next morning, they were told the guardians could not be disturbed while they were having their lunch. When they eventually did see them, the people were sent away empty-handed and it is estimated that more than 400 people died on the fatiguing journey back through that night and into the next day.

Every year, a memorial walk from Louisburgh to Doolough is held, and often members of the Choctaw tribe take part – which brings us to this  memorial:

 

Kindred Spirits in County Cork is a memorial to the Choctaw tribe of Oklahoma, who in 1847 raised $170 from their meagre resources to send to the Irish famine relief fund. Sixteen years earlier, they had taken part in their own 500-mile ‘Trail of Tears’ when they were forced to move from their ancestral lands in Mississippi to Oklahoma. Thousands died from starvation, exposure, and disease.
Their donation to the Irish only came to light in the 1980s, but since then the links between the Choctaw and the Irish have grown, with exchange visits. Last year, the Irish contributed the majority of the $3 million raised for the Navajo/Hopi tribes who were suffering a devastating outbreak of the Covid virus.

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