
The Great Irish Famine. In 1801, the population of Ireland was about 5 million. By 1841,
it had risen to more than 8 million. There were few industries, so the country depended
largely on agriculture. As the population grew, farms decreased in size. Most of the
people lived as tenants on small farms. They had to give much of what they produced to
their landlords as rent. Most of the tenant farmers struggled to survive on what was left
from their production.

Because of their poverty, many of the Irish people depended largely on potatoes for food.
Some raised animals and grew grain to pay their rents. In 1845, 1846, and 1848, blight
(disease) affected the potato crop throughout the country. The potatoes rotted, and
millions of people faced starvation.

The British prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, introduced relief plans in the poorest areas.
These plans were meant to help people earn enough money to buy grain that the
government imported from the United States. But these measures were inadequate, and
the next government, under Lord John Russell, had to distribute food free of charge.
These relief measures were also inadequate. Hundreds of thousands of people died.

As a result of the Great Famine, the population of the country dropped from 81/4 million
to 61/2 million. Historians believe that a million people died of hunger and disease.
Millions emigrated, most of them to the United States and Canada. They left Ireland
with bitterness in their hearts, believing that the United Kingdom was the cause of all
their suffering.
 The
Irish were in the worst condition upon
arrival at Grosse Isle. "An eye-witness called it
the Isle of Death, and found a strange contrast
of beauty and suffering, of levity and sorrow",
wrote Guillet, in his book The Great
Migration.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge
deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch
and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
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 it's head
because it's frightened
Still feels all the painful feelings
But they lose contact with the memory
And this leads to massive selfdestruction
ALCOHOLISM DRUG ADICTION
All desperate attempts at running
And in it's 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
An American army regulation
Says you mustn't kill more than 10%
of a nation
'Cos 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 a
nation
Through deaths on land or on ships
of emigration
But what finally broke us was not
starvation
BUT IT'S USE IN THE
CONTROLLING OF OUR
EDUCATION
School 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
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 sufferin 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
Thierry G. The
Famine Statues, Dublin.
2008. Photograph.
Dublin, Ireland. Flickr.
Yahoo! Inc. Web. 31 Oct.
2012.
 Checa,

Heaney, Seamus. "Digging."
By Seamus Heaney : The Poetry
Foundation. Poetry
Foundation, 2012. Web. 31
Oct. 2012.
<http://www.poetryfoundati
on.org/poem/177017>.

O'Connor, Sinead. Famine.
Sinead O'Connor. Sinead
O'Connor, John Reynolds,
Tim Simenon, and Phil
Coulter, 1994. CD