John E Marks

Coffin ships

Monday 7th September 2020 11:37 pm

Words seem to be without meaning.
Genocide bears a human face. A human heart. I cannot part with my half-secret, hungry heart. I crossed the broad Atlantic to Americky but left my heart in Ireland, in a village churchyard by the sea.

Warehouses stuffed with grain in Bristol. We suffered the potato blight. Starvation in plain sight. Walking skeletons. Families dumped out on the road by landlords' agents. No food for love nor money. Prayer will not awaken the landlords' hearts. Only guns and bullets will do that. Later. Much later. We must part.

The landlords worship only money. My heart is broken. I cannot stand. Too weak to cut off my own left hand, I follow her until her death. Then leave the land, alone, bereft. Head to the Atlantic coast A walking ghost.

Rot breeds rot. This fresh black word: starvation. Here in Ireland. Women and children die first. Her prayers awaken my tears and then awoke my fury. Mary, mother of God, she was a Jacobite jewel rooted in this wild beautiful land. Give me your dying hand.

The Holy, Roman Apostolic church in league with these English murderers. The son of God creates all desires. His prayers awaken my tears, and then He awakes my full fury, at this story, of the great hunger.

🌷 (2)

◄ A silence

Doppleganger contagion ►

Comments

M.C. Newberry

Wed 9th Sep 2020 14:26

Incomprehensible idiocy wasn't rare in other days, that's for sure.
The mindset was surely the result of the presumption of "the right
to rule" that existed among the aristocracy and well-to-do of the
times. Emigration from England itself was not rare - e.g. to the
Americas due to religious beliefs and social ostracism - and it was
surely arrogant idiocy & incompetence that saw Lord North preside
over the loss of British influence and control in the America of the
day even while the old enemy, France, was vying for control there.
On such turns of history's wheel does the fate of succeeding generations find its outcome.
On a lighter "emigrational" note (of sorts), there was a huge
exodus from other European lands to places like the USA (the promised land?) and the latter benefitted accordingly. Look at how
a certain I. Baline became the "Anglicised" Irving Berlin - and
one of the world's immortal songwriters. And wasn't a certain
JFK of Irish origin? The world can move in mysterious ways!

John Marks

Tue 8th Sep 2020 22:22

Only five generations away, Mark. The main reason, in my view, that these British Isles are fractured and that the Republic of Ireland is a sovereign nation, is the famine. That is why the Irish, and their British and American cousins, will never forgive and never forget. Thank you Paul and thank you Cathy and Mark.

This is how much empathy there was from British Government ministers to the Irish victims of famine:

“The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.” Charles Trevelyan (1807-1886)

Trevelyan's most enduring mark on history was the "quasi" genocidal anti-Irish racial sentiment he expressed during his term in the critical position of administrating relief for the millions of Irish peasants suffering under the potato blight as Assistant Secretary to HM Treasury (1840–1859) under the Whig administration of Lord Russell.

M.C. Newberry

Tue 8th Sep 2020 15:49

A great tragedy that seems inexplicable to modern sensibilities.
As indeed, does "the clearances" in Scotland when countless
souls were evicted from their homes and many emigrated as a result.
Greed for wealth without facing redress produces unaccountable inhumanity. The apparent ineffectiveness of the Church in these
instances demands explanation when considering the power and
social influence of the institution in those distant days.

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