Holiday Turned Pilgrimage (Part 3)

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The death of my aunt affected me to the point where I just did not have the emotional capacity to do anything except my job at work. I miss her presence, but I also grieve the loss of her life lived and the memories she takes with her. The moments of love and laughter she created, the warm and welcoming home she ran, and the memories of a bygone time she held. My aunt had memories of my great-grandparents who I never knew. The only other person I can now ask about them is my uncle.

Family can be frustrating at the holidays; lord do I have experience with some toxic individuals I am so unfortunate to call blood relatives, but I also have amazing ones and I fully intend to color the rest of our lives with beautiful memories of laughter and love. If you are so lucky to have family that loves you, I hope you are able to spend time with them this holiday season. Happy Thanksgiving from our home to yours.

Warmly,
Lauren

Two posts ago I discussed how Irish culture really fascinated me when I visited Ireland in September. Today I will focus on two parts of Irish history that I found particularly emotionally impactful: the Famine and the fight for independence.

There’s no way you can escape the enduring legacy of the Famine. Every tour mentioned it, multiple museums have a section about it, and there are memorials everywhere dedicated to not just those who died, but also to those who left Ireland in search for a future free from poverty and death.

This memorial in Galway near Salthill has the names of 50 famine ships that carried people away from Ireland

At first I was taken aback by the sheer amount of Famine history I was receiving by simply existing in this country. It made me wonder if this entire island was stuck in the past, unable to move forward. But then it hit me: around 1 million people starved to death and another 1.5 million left, never to return. All this out of a population of 8.2 million people at the time. That’s at least 1 in every 4 friends and relatives gone, meaning that you quite likely knew several people who’d died or left already, but if you didn't, then it was probably you who was departing some harbor for the new world, assuming you hadn’t already succumbed to your own starvation. The video below does an excellent job illustrating population changes over the last 200 years and how it drastically disadvantaged Ireland internationally for 180 years after the Famine period.


It's not just cities where the Famine remains visible; the Famine’s traces are also engraved into the countryside itself. Famine walls line the hills where hungry and depleted laborers constructed them as part of a “relief” program installed by the British to “incentivize” the Irish to work for starvation wages that no longer afforded the food people needed to buy because of the British’ economic laissez-faire attitude to soaring food prices that worked in conjunction with the failure of the diseased potato crop to kill a million people. These walls were completely useless and served absolutely no purpose. Instead, they haunt the countryside as proof that thousands of humans were so desperate to feed themselves and their families that they built these long-standing walls.

First view of the Famine walls.

I've seen pictures of the walls and thought they were so beautiful. I didn't know prior to my trip of how they came to be.

“Why not knock them down so you’re not constantly reminded of death and hunger?” I pondered. It didn’t take me long to rid myself of that horrible thought. Removing them not only erases the memory of these poor souls (many of them nameless with only these walls to speak to their existence), but it’s as pointless an activity as their original construction.

The walls are also not isolated to one little area; they extend for numerous miles. I was continually reminded of this tragic past, but what reeled me in even more forcefully against my will were the still-existing rows of lazy beds (they look like shallow trenches) where potato crops once grew. I have a hard time describing the total devastation that must have been felt in this exact location when growers pulled their crops from the earth only to discover them consecutively blackened with blight, completely inedible, leaving the land’s occupants helpless to feed themselves.

They are easy to miss if you’re not properly searching, so I’ve circled them in this picture. It’s now taboo to grow potatoes in this region and, like the Famine walls, these furrowed fields remain untouched to this day as old painful scars across an otherwise beautiful landscape.

For those defying fate with emigration, leaving back then was not the same as leaving today: the financial and emotional costs were much higher compared to the present day. There were no telephones, and the electric telegraph didn’t arrive until the 1850s. The journey alone was so expensive, arduous, and dangerous that family members never saw each other again. The song below by Planxty is a beautiful expression of the mass emigration experienced by those left behind.



The next part of Irish history that touched me happened about half a century prior to the Famine: the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Before I continue, let me apologize in advance to all the Irish for my woeful deficiency in your (also now my family's) history: somehow in my studies up until September, it had escaped me that the Irish were the OG opressed by British colonialism.

That's me in there.

via GIPHY

I've known for years about India and Africa and all the attrocities that happened there, but it makes sense that Ireland would have been the first: they're right next door. The 1798 rebellion was one of many bloody conflicts that took place this century for independence, such as the American (1775-1783), French (1789-1799), and Haitian (1791-1804) revolutions. However, unlike their fellow freedom fighters around the globe, the Irish initially failed to gain independence all the way until 1921 as the 1798 rebellion ended in tragic defeat.

I had known for years that my grandfather's great-grandfather (Patrick Synnott) was born in County Wexford, Ireland in 1792. I had had no idea that he had lived through such a turbulent time, not to mention in the exact location where the rebellion had more success compared to other counties. He was only six years old in 1798, so I hope he didn't witness any of the bloody violence, but even if he was so lucky to escape this due to his young age, his older siblings or parents probably saw some of the horror. Not to mention that the fallout of losing this conflict would have created lasting impacts on his adult life; I wouldn't be surprised if it is what propelled him to later emigrate to the United States.

The fact that it took so long for the Irish to obtain independence is heart-breaking. Maybe that's the American in me looking at how we successfully repelled the British not too many years before the Irish tried to do the same thing but to no avail in their lifetime. I have yet to read more about this part of Irish history, but I imagine Patrick would have been happy to hear of his compatriots' success had he lived long enough to witness it. Similarly, he probably would have been horrified about the news of the Famine, which he had luckily escaped. I'm unsure if I can say the same for the rest of his family.

Reflecting on the emotional depth of Ireland's history, it's evident that the scars of the Famine and the persistent struggle for independence have left an indelible mark on the nation's identity (not counting these events also shaped the genetic makeup of America's population two centuries later). As I gained more exposure to these historical chapters, I couldn't help but feel a profound sense of admiration for the resilience of the Irish people. Their tenacity in overcoming adversity and their unwavering pursuit of freedom stand as testaments to the human spirit's enduring strength. While these chapters were undeniably gut-wrenching, they also serve as reminders of the vivacity and determination that continue to shape Ireland's beautiful culture today.