New Music?

[rklenseth]

Well I like the Scottish and Irish, so Bleah to you

You ever hear about the song where the Irish woman find a drunk Scot. I'll have to find that one but it is not for the faint of heart.

[rklenseth]

You like the ones decended from those who managed to surive there.

The Irish famine is the reason why that set of great grand parents moved here.

That's 25% of the lineage that moved here for the Irish famine and 50% of the lineage that moved here because Musselini had a thing against blonds.

Europe was a big no fun zone around 70 years ago.

There's a bit of Scott in the remainder.

Actually the Great Hunger in Ireland occured around 1850 (actually around 1848 and lasted about 5 years) but the immigrations continued from Ireland well into the 1890's before it died out until the 1910's. The Irish that came over here during the 1910-1940's were those trying to escape the wars between Britain and then later the Irish Civil War. Most of my Irish ancestors came over during the Great Hunger or a little bit after that. And anyways, the Great Hunger was a genocidal and enthic cleansing act committed by the British that out did the Holocaust but it seems that is over looked by history. Though I guess it doesn't matter as long as the Irish remember what it really was.

[Solfius]

I thought the potato famine (which is what I think you mean by Great Hunger) was caused by some kind of blight that turned the potatoes foul?

[jeslange]

I thought it was 'cause the Britts took everything.

[Solfius]

hmm, if I had my anthology handy I could quote some poetry that is Seamus Heaney's recognition of his natural heritage. From that it would seem the potatoes were blighted and ruined, crops failed etc

[rklenseth]

I thought the potato famine (which is what I think you mean by Great Hunger) was caused by some kind of blight that turned the potatoes foul?

The Irish call the Potato Famine the Great Hunger so you are correct. A blight did kill off the potatoes which was the only think the Irish were allowed to eat or could even grow because the English landlords tooks over all the fertile land leaving the Irish only the bogs and mountains. The thing is that there was enough wheat and corn grown in Ireland to feed the whole population but the Irish were not allowed to touch it because it was the property of the English govenrment and that the English use to consider the Irish a race of people below human so they weren't good enough to be fed wheat or corn. The ironic part is that most of that wheat and corn was going to be used for animal feed. The English kept it from them because they thought the Irish population was too big anyways and wanted it to be smaller and that is exaclty what happened. Millions starved to death and millions more came to America and Canada. There were a few 'good' English landlords who did feed the Irish but the to feed 9 million people is an impossible task when you can only use the wheat and corn you had on your land.

There is a lot of literature on the Great Hunger. I suggest you read it.

[rklenseth]

hmm, if I had my anthology handy I could quote some poetry that is Seamus Heaney's recognition of his natural heritage. From that it would seem the potatoes were blighted and ruined, crops failed etc

The potato crop failed but there was enough wheat and corn being grown in Ireland to feed the whole Irish population. But Irish kept it away from them and refused to feed the Irish who at the same time denied them to practice their way of life and denied them to be ruled by their own people.

[sammigurl61190]

When did the conversation turn to this? LOL

Oh, and whatever the debate, I vote for the Irish!!! My step-mom's family is Irish, so I'm step-Irish. LOL I used to get out of school on St. Patrick's day to see the flag raising, and eat corned beef and cabbage. (yum!) And I was in thr St. Patrick's Day parade in St. Louis for 5 years! And, I was in the parade in Dogtown which is ON St. Patrick's Day, instead of on the weekend, 3 years ago. So HA! LOL

GO IRISH!!

[rklenseth]

This is an essay I wrote from my Irish Studies class

The Grest Hunger of 1845-1852 in Ireland was originally a natural catastrophe that got out of hand but that would become both genocide and ethic cleansing. The British used every excuse in the book to otherwise limit food going into Ireland and to find ways to deplete the Irish population from the land of the Irish. For 7 years, millions of Irish died or emigrated to places like America. Others that stayed faced constant hunger, slavery by the wealthy landlords and British workhouses, and the British tried to stop the Irish from having children.
Fact is that genocide and ethnic cleansing began in Ireland long before the Great Hunger. From the "Pale" (Statutes of Kilkenny) to Oliver Cromwell to the cleansing of the Northern Provinces ("To Hell or Connacht") of Ireland of Irish Catholics all of which occurred before the Great Hunger. But the Celtic, Catholic Irish always seemed to have found a way to survive both physically and culturally. The Great Hunger would be the worse of these genocidal acts upon the Irish people.
The crops of potatoes in Ireland had begun to fail before 1845 due to the potato blight. The blight spread quickly across the world and eventually made its way to Ireland. It didn't take long for the blight to destroy the Irish potato crop. The Irish, who lived on the potatoes for food, soon found themselves starving. One of the sad parts of this tragedy was that the Irish grew enough wheat to feed the themselves but the British took the wheat from the Irish for their own purposes. The British also took a hands off approach to the famine using the excuse of "laissez-faire" to stay out of helping fix the Irish famine. The fact of the matter is that the British upheld the absolute right of the landlords aswell as passed the Poor Law that allowed and even encouraged landlords to evict the Irish from their land. The British also made sure that grains from places like America did not get to Ireland. A great demostration of one-way policy of "laissez-faire". The British could also have built fisheries so that the Irish could have employed the sea to feed them but instead created workhouses that built useless roads that led to nowhere. Eventually, the landlords got rid of the workhouses because they did not want to pay the costs and instead paid passage for their Irish tenants to North America aboard "Coffin Ships". Other Irish went to America to find both food and work.
All in all, the British hd the means to stop the Great Hunger in Ireland but instead chose not to. The British employed means to make the Irish emigrate, the means to keep the Irish from having children or getting married, the means to starve the Irish to death, the means to change the Irish culture by feeding those that turned to the British, and the means to destroy the Irish people in any way possible. Even after the Great Hunger, the British still employed the means to get the Irish to emigrate to America or away from Ireland. The Great Hunger is genocride and far from just a natural catastrophe.

Something I didn't include in this essay was that when the cure for the blight was discovered, the British went out of their way to make sure that Irish could not get it.

[Meh]

And was the blight natural? Sort of. It was a natural event. Nature hates everything being the same. It was caused by the limited amount of potatoes that all of Ireland was "seeded" with. Potatoes came from America. Central or South America, I'm not sure.

[jeslange]

Hey RK, the song is called "The Scotsman." I tried to put up the lyrics, but I'm special.

[west]

Well I like the Scottish and Irish, so Bleah to you

You ever hear about the song where the Irish woman find a drunk Scot. I'll have to find that one but it is not for the faint of heart.

I don't know where ye been, me lad, but I'm glad ye won first prize.

I'm probably about 3/4 Scots, with bits of English, Welsh, Prussian, French, and Osage thrown in the mix as well.

[rklenseth]

And was the blight natural? Sort of. It was a natural event. Nature hates everything being the same. It was caused by the limited amount of potatoes that all of Ireland was "seeded" with. Potatoes came from America. Central or South America, I'm not sure.

Actually potatoes weren't limited. The blight was so bad that it would totally wipe out a whole crop of potatoes overnight. And thing is potatoes were the only thing the Irish were allowed to eat. The wheat and corn were for those that adhere to English law which was pretty much convert to Anglican and denounce your Celtic, Catholic heritage then you would have rights under English law as well as food on your plate. The thing is that most Irish were stronger than that.

[west]

Despite their cool accents, the British have been rat bastards to an incredible amount of people in the last few hundred years.

They're all better now, though, right?

[new.vogue.nightmare]