Farewell Forever
“What were the Irish words, As Gaeilge, that my ancestors would have heard as their Farewell Forever from those who remained behind as they boarded the Famine Ship from Cobh, County Cork to set sail for America in the 1860s, never expecting to return?”, Judge Evans was asking his visiting in-laws from Ireland. He was an Irish-American himself who had retired as a District Court Judge in Middle America seven years before, now aged 70 years. His son had married an Irish girl that same year of retirement, which prestigious event roused him to begin the search for his authentic Gaelic Roots and which by now had become something of an obsession for him. He knew that his great Grandfather had arrived impoverished and frightened but safely from Ireland on the shores of America all of 133 years before, eventually settling down in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “Go Bas in Eireannach E” came the immediate reply, the visitor delighted to share the answer that the questioner had long sought; proudly adding the translation “May you die in Ireland” in a show of deep respect. It was indeed a profound goodbye, the Judge thought, as his eye filled with a tear. He was so proud of his ancestors’ native tongue, a pride equally matched by his Finnish wife who still spoke in her native tongue to one of their children, including that night. Finnish was a language the Judge had learned too, in secret, something only revealed to his wife and daughter with unbridled joy in the presence of his esteemed visitors later that night. Of course, anyone would do it for the one they loved and love, he mused, he just forgot to tell his wife! He was 77 now, and with health and his voice in particular declining, he had to be astutely persuaded not to answer that Farewell Forever call, and forego his instinctive desire to buy a piece of the old sod, a cottage back in Ireland, to which he would return for the end of his days. That was the beginning of an intensive weekend where passion for the land of his ancestors overflowed into a heartfelt sense of longing and belonging with his ancestral homeland. There were so many questions that flowed from there, that just had to be answered in the extraordinary moment of learning with his Irish visitors. As the aurora borealis rose in the night sky to enthral his Irish visitors, together they began climbing the Great Wall of Silence surrounded as they usually are by secrets and lies that always ‘protected’ those unspeakable times their people lived in up to 150 years ago.
The Mass Exodus
For the Judge’s Irish born Great Grandfather, America was a great land of hope and glory just as it was for millions of other Irish people fleeing the aftermath of Famine of that time. Hadn’t his family’s arrival followed on the well-trodden trail of those escaping the wrath of the Great Irish Famine of 1845-51, a period during which 1 million people died and caused the Mass Exodus of 1 million more Emigrants to a land of unparalleled opportunity, North America.
Fortunately, the 1860s had followed hot on the heels of those heady Californian Gold Rush days of 1848-9. He knew that his Irish Ancestors played a central part in the subsequent bridge-building and railroad laying that was to build the America that he now knew and served so well, a place he proudly called home. In fact, 4 million Irish people out of a population back in that day of just over 8 million people had emigrated to the United States in the post-Famine era from 1850s until 1929. His visitors were particularly aware of the sheer scale of the Mississippi River bridge-crossing endeavour that had always caught their imagination, it had held a particular fascination for the Irish descendants of those who had to remain behind to face the fearsome ravages of that Famine aftermath due to their advancing age, poor health or lack of means of travel. It was clearly emotional to recall but unavoidable once their memory banks were opened, yet lightened somewhat by memories of songs they used to sing as children, especially recalling Shenandoah: “Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you, Away, you rolling river, Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you, Away, we’re bound away, across the wide Missouri.” And of course there was Danny Boy too, that unofficial Irish national anthem that had been adopted by generations of Irish everywhere, regardless its true origins: “Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling. From glen to glen, and down the mountain side. The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling. ‘Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide. But come ye back when Summer’s in the meadow. Or, when the valley’s hushed and white with snow. ‘Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow. Oh, Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.”
No other words or songs could fit the moment so perfectly. It possessed a certain magic in that moment. It had resonated for Emigrants as a message of universal hope that they might return one day, one that never left them, but also a pride in what Irish Emigrants could endure and yet achieve while escaping from the sheer horrors of that Great Famine. Indeed, countless more memories were memorialised in The Songs their Fathers Sung as kept alive by the Irish Storytellers, as custodians of sacred social memories that most often captured and retained the soul of a people and a place. The night could not pass without mention of Gaelic stature of Seanchai Peig Sayers who died in 1958 aged 85 and to whom our ancestral homeland owed her a great debt of gratitude. It was Peig from the Blasket Islands that best depicted on record the declining years of the traditional Irish-speaking way of life “as characterised by poverty, devout Catholicism, and folk memory of gang violence, the Great Hunger and the Penal Laws.” In youth, Irish people were captivated by her stories of how their Irish Ancestors, with precious little possessions except sometimes a little silver, had travelled in over-laden coffin ships like cattle, many dying at sea or infected by cholera, to traverse unknown, unfriendly and mostly uninhabited lands to start life all over again, while leaving the people and land they loved so well behind, most never to return. These songs and stories were an exchange of memories that triggered a cultural awakening among all those lucky enough to be present that great night.
The Oregon Trail
No Irish-American Story could possibly be complete without following in the tracks, trails and caravans of those making that incredibly long and dangerous journey by wagon along the East to West Oregon Trail in the opening up of the Western States of America in the 19th Century. And so it was that night. The wagon train would travel at around two miles an hour, enabling the Emigrants to cover an average of ten miles a day. After 1874, on one such route with good weather, the 2,000 mile journey from Missouri to California and Oregon, it generally would take about five months, crossing ten great States and a 2,350 mile long Mississippi at Carnegie’s Eads Bridge, St Louis, Kansas to the South while following the cattle trail to where many of their Irish Ancestors live today. The all-time favourite fascination for the Judge’s visitors, however, were the stories about those who travelled North of where Mississippi rises in Minnesota instead, through the black hills of Dakota onto Oregon, lured by the Californian Gold Fever and the Land Grab that had since consumed that new nation. They travelled in fear for their lives across treacherous Native Indian territory, many dying on the way, or were forced to settle down in one of the newly founded States West of the Mississippi through lack of resources to carry on. Absorbed now, his visitors’ interest was piqued as they recalled how their namesake from the County of Wexford had arrived in San Francisco by boat in 1843, was first to serve in the army with a Swiss immigrant named John Sutter, who later become the famous General Sutter. After a stint in the army he had worked in his joinery at Sutter’s Creek, California, an old unused mine that was named after General John Sutter who owned the sawmills. Incredulously, it was there that the first gold was discovered on January 24, 1848, though kept secret for many months until the area was secured. Sutter had arrived in the area in 1846, and was the first European to try his luck mining there in 1848. A true pioneer, they told how their namesake went on to become the first Surveyor and Senator for San Francisco in 1858. He was one of the first settlers of Sebastopol, where he subsequently purchased Rancho Estero Americano and two other vast Ranches.
Blessed be the Storytellers
We must marvel at the Storytellers. Where would the truth be without them? One memory revived another. More memories of the Judge’s grandparents and visitors’ ancestors were freely resurrected and exchanged. There were jaw-dropping stories of the millions who could afford it being driven by hunger and extreme poverty to Emigrate to America on coffin ships, carrying countless emigrants, crowded and disease-ridden, with poor access to food and water. Shockingly, they were in such poor condition, overloaded and over-insured that it was believed they were more valuable to its owners if sunk. This resulted in so many deaths as they crossed the Atlantic that it led to the 1847 North American typhus epidemic at quarantine stations in Canada, when owners of coffin ships were believed to have provided as little food, water, and living space as was legally possible – if they obeyed the law at all. While coffin ships were the cheapest way to cross the Atlantic, mortality rates of 30% aboard them were commonplace. It partly explained why so many who left were never to be heard from again. They recalled how their Grandparents who had to remain at home had managed to survive through the great hunger that followed the Great Famine, amidst the abject poverty, destitution and social exclusion that was commonplace in the late 1800s. It was staggering for all present to learn by word of mouth how the population of their little Island of 32 county Ireland had declined from 8 million in 1840 to four million. They told how in the 26 Counties of the South alone the population declined from 6.53 million in 1841 before the Famine to lowest point of 2.82 million in 1961, and increasing again to 3.62 million by the time they met, 1996. The awe at the strength of character their ancestors displayed filled that room, the impact of their stories never to leave them, that sense of how much was owed to their ancestors, those who left and those who stayed too, for their incredible achievements, gifts they left behind for the benefit of the generations that followed them.
Their shared Ancestors lived through, and were part of dire experiences that were preserved to be passed down by the storytellers, many too painful to retell for 150 years, just like those of so many war veterans, yet preserved in story to guide succeeding generations on their pathway ahead today. Alongside that trauma, there was the endless fight for Irish Freedom, desperately seeking for centuries to get out from under the oft-called yoke of nearly 800 years of British colonisation, their rule in an era of heartless suppression of their People, their Culture and their Native Language. Much of it was an eye opener, indeed a Revelation to all present, most of it never even told so clearly in the history books. Why, they pondered? Because ‘the winners wrote history’, that was it, the Irish Catholic history was written by their Protestant British Conquerors of the time. But! There were other Ancestral stories too never properly told until then too; of the 200,000 Irish both from North and South had fought in WWI (1914-18), of whom 49,400 died and among whom were believed to be up to 120,000 of Southern birth, brave people who fought and died alongside each other both North and South as members of the British Army. Most were never recognised for their contribution to the safety of Europe upon their return to an Ireland that was consumed in the aftermath of The Rising 1916, caught in the jaws of the ‘Big Flu’ pandemic of 1918-19, and being just before the Irish War of Independence of 1919-21 and the Civil War of 1922-23. Most of their stories were never properly told by the time of that year, 1996, as most participants in those times were so traumitised that they took their experiences, forever unspoken, with them to their grave. These were unspeakable times in Ireland in 1800s and early 1900s that were rarely spoken about for up to 150 later, their pain too great. Silence is a big word in Irish Culture, ‘if you have something to say, say nothing’ was a common mantra. Those Great Truths to Tell only survived in the words and records of the Storytellers, their Ancestors, to whom every Irish person is indebted for their great legacy to the future. Conversely, breaking down those Great Walls of Silence bequeathed a corridor of the greatest opportunities for future generations to follow. It all seemed to make sense somehow to all those present, just as the dawn swept in and bedtime in Middle America beckoned.
Eriuvation: A Village Vista 2020 