Nice one, thanks and kudos to your daughter. I was interested in what Sinead said:
Sinead O'Connor Lyrics ""Famine""
OK, I want to talk about Ireland Specifically I want to talk about the "famine" About the fact that there never really was one There was no "famine"
See, Irish people were only allowed to eat potatoes All of the other food, meat, fish, vegetables Were shipped out of the country under armed guard To England while the Irish people starved
And then, on the middle of all this They gave us money not to teach our children Irish And so we lost our history And this is what I think is still hurting me
See, we're like a child that's been battered Has to drive itself out of its head because it's frightened Still feels all the painful feelings But they lose contact with the memory
And this leads to massive self-destruction Alcoholism, drug addiction All desperate attempts at running And in its worst form becomes actual killing
And if there ever is gonna be healing There has to be remembering and then grieving So that there then can be forgiving There has to be knowledge and understanding
All the lonely people Where do they all come from
An American army regulation Says you mustn't kill more than 10% of a nation 'Cause to do so causes permanent "psychological damage" It's not permanent, but they didn't know that
Anyway, during the supposed "famine" We lost a lot more than 10% of our nation Through deaths on land or on ships of emigration But what finally broke us was not starvation But its use in the controlling of our education Schools go on about "Black 47" On and on about "The terrible famine" But what they don't say is in truth There really never was one
(Excuse me) All the lonely people (I'm sorry, excuse me) Where do they all come from (That I can tell you in one word) All the lonely people Where do they all belong
So let's take a look, shall we? The highest statistics of child abuse in the EEC And we say we're a Christian country But we've lost contact with our history See, we used to worship God as a mother We're suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder Look at all our old men in the pubs Look at all our young people on drugs
We used to worship God as a mother Now look at what we're doing to each other We've even made killers of ourselves The most child-like trusting people in the Universe And this is what's wrong with us Our history books, the parent figures lied to us I see the Irish as a race like a child That got itself bashed in the face
And if there ever is gonna be healing There has to be remembering and then grieving So that there then can be forgiving There has to be knowledge and understanding
All the lonely people Where do they all come from All the lonely people Where do they all come from
[John Hume's voice:] We stand on the brink of a great achievement In this Ireland there is no solution to be found to our disagreements by shooting each other There is no real invader here We are all Irish in all our different kinds of ways We must not, now or ever in the future, show anything to each other except tolerance, forbearance and neighbourly love
[Man's voice:] Because of our tradition everyone here knows who he is and what God expects him to do
She was right that Irish people starved so that English people didn't. Food enough to feed about 2,000,000 people was exported, a million Irish people fled for their lives and another 800,000 died of famine and its consequences. QED.The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
The trauma of it still exists in our collective memory and DNA. Through the generations our minds and bodies have been completely shaped by it. For example the rates of Haemochromatosis in Ireland are still much higher than in other European countries: https://www.irishamerica.com/2013/08/the-great-hunger-and-the-celitc-gene/
The population before the famine was 8 million and continued to plummet after it until well into the 20th century due to mass-emigration, reaching as low as 2.8 million in the Republic in 1961. The devestation on our language, culture and psyche is unprecedented in modern Europe and more akin to the destruction wrought on Indigenous societies of the Americas and Australia. That's why the Irish feel such an affinity with the Palestinians and even many of those not usually considered 'political' are horrified at what is being done to them and take to the streets. The pain is exacerbated by the fact that we haven't fully undergone our own process of decolonisation.
Thanks for elaborating Fionn. Don't know much about it, but I am getting educated .. here etc. Interesting about the DNA traces link.
When I think about potatoes and hunger, it always reminds me of Van Gogh's painting:
The potato eaters 1886
Are they drinking tea or coffee? Not the same period as Irish famine/genocide, and 20 odd years later, but I would have thought it describes the village life in this still semi-feudal Europe.
No doubt it is connected with Dutch and English colonialism, which had different timelines in different locations. The Jewel in the Crown won in the Angloshere with tea, (from China) via India/Ceylon eventually. Apologies, just speculating on the margins.
Interesting stuff about haemochromatosis, thx Fionn (nm)
Posted by Ian M on April 1, 2024, 10:36 pm, in reply to "It was a genocide."
on March 31, 2024, 7:58 pm