Remarks by President mCaleese at the launch of ‘Mapping the Great Irish Famine’ Newman House, Dublin
Remarks by President mCaleese at the launch of ‘Mapping the Great Irish Famine’ Newman House, Dublin Wednesday 15th March,2000
A dhaoine uaisle, is breá liom bheith anseo inniu i measc mo chairde. Go raibh maith agaibh as fáilte fiorchaoin a chur romham.
It is a particular pleasure to launch this beautifully presented work of scholarship on the Great Famine, not just because the authors are all former Queen’s colleagues, well known to me from another life, but because in that other life I was privileged to have more than a little insight into the colossal work which lies behind this publication. This book grew out of an initiative in Queen’s Department of Economic and Social History to compile a Database of Irish Historical Statistics spanning the years 1821 to 1971. Said quickly it may sound an easy task but in the doing of it, it was truly Herculean. It demanded a huge level of team cohesion and dedication but I remember my visits to what was then a work in progress and what I remember is the energy, the enthusiasm and the pride in creating what is now a precious and accessible resource.
That database tells many stories about life as it was lived on this island and those who created, and now sustain the development of, that database had enormous faith in its attraction to researchers. They knew that scholarly raids would be launched on it, ransacking it for the raw material which would feed the analysis which in turn would feed intelligent public understanding of the past.
This publication is the result of such a raid by a very able squad of historian commandos, Liam Kennedy, Paul Ell, Margaret Crawford and Leslie Clarkson. Though the sweep of the database is wide they chose to start with the Great Famine because of the way in which it, inescapably, dominates the landscape of the period. Its publication comes during a period of intense revisiting of the Famine and the many issues it raises and it will, I think, become a vital reference to all those interested in this ongoing searching debate.
The commemorations of the 150th anniversary of the Famine in the past few years jolted many deeply rooted memories for us, memories which had been like weeping wounds, deep within our collective consciousness. The commemorations and remembrances were a painful but essential part of our maturing and healing as a people. They are also a vital part of the communal memory our young people need to have access to and ownership of in these prosperous times as the egalitarian ambitions of this republic become fully realisable and achievable for the first time. A country with such a memory recognises its global obligations to the vulnerable peoples of the world as well as to its vulnerable people at home.
The facts and statistics which have been compiled in this book are truly shocking, even from this distance. Most Irish people would be aware of the decline in the population resulting from the Famine and the consequential emigration. Fewer would have a real understanding of the way Ireland was changed utterly on so many levels: the Irish language was hit sharply simply because so many users either died or emigrated, religious observance was also affected, the marriage rate declined steeply. The statistics given for the decline in county population are staggering: some counties, including Roscommon where my own ancestors come from, lost almost 30% of their population between 1841 and 1851. The Famine accelerated the trend towards urbanisation which many of our rural communities are still fighting back against even today.
And yet this disaster brought out our innate strength, it is also a story of great heroism and self-sacrifice. All the religious denominations worked to relieve the suffering of the starving. The magnificent response of the Society of Friends should never be forgotten. Both Protestant and Catholic clergy established soup kitchens where the poor could obtain a daily meal. The Church of Ireland was deeply involved in the relief effort. In black ’47 alone, forty Protestant clergy died from famine fever. When the Reverend Patrick Pounden the rector of Westport died of famine fever contracted in relief work, it was revealed that he was giving more than half his stipend to the local relief committee. He and many others chose to mortgage their lives for their fellow human beings.
Such accounts help to throw fresh light on what was a complex aspect of our history. They show how human decency prevails, even in the most dreadful of circumstances. They also demonstrate how such decency crossed all barriers of class, faith and position. The famine gave Irish people an innate understanding of famine and disaster and this kind of selfless effort is continued today by the work of Irish NGOs in places like East Timor, Somalia, Honduras and Mozambique.
But in the 1840s the individual efforts were sadly unable to do more than scratch the surface of the problem. The numbers who died were beyond counting, the shadows cast over future generations too soon even yet to fully analyse or understand. Only now do we feel the shadows rising enough to let us talk about this awesome thing with the beginnings of distance. Previous generations could not bring themselves to even mention it, so traumatised were they by its horror.
Today a new generation looks back. It wants to know and to know the story well. It wants to understand itself, to know the things which gave it shape, to explore the silences and the shames, to deal with them and learn from them. This Ireland is now a prosperous modern European country economically and culturally dynamic and successful. It forms part of a huge global Irish family, itself a phenomenon born largely out of Famine times. For many members of the global Irish family the Great Famine was the cathartic event in their family history. The experience of exile, of building lives from scratch in distant and sometimes hostile worlds, has been transcended by the successes of the new generations, with their twin or multiple identities. But that global Irish family is now also inquisitive about that past and anxious to deal with its unsolved mysteries. At home and abroad the Irish family now has the self-confidence to deal with the consequences of its own curiosity and it is so important that we satiate that curiosity with statistics, facts, analyses based on sound, credible scholarship. But it is about more than curiosity. As the authors say,”….one can be led astray by discussions of historical divides, of turning points and change….The importance of the Great Hunger in modern Irish and European history derives not from its perceived role in deflecting the course of historical change but from the experience of suffering on such a vast scale.”
It is that suffering we hope will energise a new generation to care, to be bringers of help and of hope, planners of an end to such suffering.
My congratulations to both authors and the publishers, Four Courts Press on making this work so accessible and attractive in presentation. May it in turn stimulate more research and more understanding of the shaping forces of our past. May it provoke pride in the extent of human decency in the teeth of abject suffering as well as an articulate horror at the depths of human neglect.
Guím rath agus séan ar bhur gcuid oibre. Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.