On Monday 27
October, autumn half-term, we decided to head to two places in County Roscommon
that are very important to the history of this island: the National Famine
Museum in Strokestown, and Rathcroghan, which is one of Ireland’s five ancient
royal sites and the burial ground of the kings of Connaught.
Aoife had
told us of a lot of noteworthy events and places to go during this week, so we
took her advice. She is a particularly wise woman and her husband works at the
museum in Strokestown. We were told it was an interesting place, but until we
arrived, I don’t think any of us were prepared for what awaited us. The vast
grounds lead up to a sprawling complex of buildings housing a multiple-award-winning
testimony to the horrors of the early Victorian period in Ireland.
The reason
the National Museum dedicated to the single most catastrophic event to befall
these islands is located in Strokestown is explained in the main exhibition
itself. Major Denis Mahon, a British Army officer, was the landlord of
Strokestown House at the time of the Famine and was ambushed, shot and killed
on his way home from an emergency relief meeting. There are still question
marks over the identity of his killer and also over his character, but on the
whole, he was another in the long line of English ruling class bigwigs who put value
for money above the struggle for equity and justice. The events leading up to
his death, the potential motives for them, the records left intact and the buildings
that bear testimony to the Famine make Strokestown the most important remnant
of the age.
In 1836, nine
years before the Famine, Major Mahon took over Strokestown House from his uncle
Maurice, against whom he brought an injunction claiming he was unfit to care
for the estate. This was primarily because he had waived the rent agreements of
the village of Ballykilcline under his control and ceded part of the estate
back to the Crown. Maurice was handed an official declaration stating he was a
lunatic, and that Denis was to be his legal guardian and the sole executor of
Strokestown House along with its vast lands and estate.
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| A typical dwelling of the time made out of turf, or peat |
The estate
itself was in serious debt – £30,000 to be precise, or over £4 million in
today’s money, so Major Mahon set to work trying to claw back the debts. This
included demanding the three years of rent owed by the villagers of Ballykilcline
and various other tenants his uncle had turned a blind eye to.
Many of the
inhabitants of Roscommon, the county where Strokestown is situated, were so disgruntled
by the obligation to pay rent despite all the hardships befalling them, that
they went on strike. Mahon tried to evict many of his own tenants, but they
kept returning, so in 1847, two years into the Great Famine, he took the advice
that the price of hiring a couple of ships to send his own tenants off to
Canada would cost less than their upkeep in Strokestown.
It was about
70km to Sligo Harbour in the west, but he was advised it was cheaper to make
them walk to Dublin, over double the distance away. From there they had to
catch a boat to Liverpool before being herded onto four of the notorious Coffin
Ships and transported across the Atlantic. The journey in 1847 took about six
weeks but could last double that time, depending on the skill of the navigator
and the clemency of the weather. Added to that, people weren’t always allowed
to leave the ship upon arrival: many ships were quarantined due to disease.
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| Some of the faces of those from the area, placed on pillars and hung from the ceiling |
The lack of
food, water, hygiene and space experienced by these émigrés meant that only a
little over half of all Mahon’s former tenants made it to Canada. That is why
they were called Coffin Ships – a fact that even the sharks of the Atlantic
Ocean were aware of, as they were often seen trailing these vessels, for
obvious reasons. When word about the conditions reached those back in
Strokestown who hadn’t made the journey, there was great distress.
We have to
understand the political situation at the time to get a fuller picture. I won’t
go into the minutiae of details, but it’s safe to say that the Prime Minister
of the time, Sir Robert Peel, was about as popular in Ireland as a bout of e-coli.
Indigenous Irish Catholics, who made up the vast majority of the population, were
more or less at the mercy of the Protestant landed gentry. A famine a century
earlier, along with several promises to raise the Catholics from their status
as second class citizens that had been broken, had already made the Westminster
ruling elite and the British Crown deeply unpopular.
William Pitt
the Younger actually resigned as Prime Minister after 18 years because he was
thwarted by the aristocracy while trying to emancipate the Irish Catholics. George
III, a man who had already misjudged the American situation, showed further
signs of being tone deaf when he refused to allow Catholics to sit in
Parliament. This meant that when Ireland and Great Britain merged as the United
Kingdom on 1 January 1801, not a single MP was representing the majority in
Ireland in the House of Commons.
In August of
1847, three months after many of his tenants had left Strokestown, Mahon showed
up at his domain having been in England far away from the chaos. What chaos do
I mean? In September 1845, a little under two years before this, a disease
called Phytophthora Infestans had arrived on the shores of Ireland having been
detected in other parts of Europe from 1842 already.
The blight
had not affected other countries’ inhabitants as much as those of Ireland
because they had a more varied diet. In Ireland, there was only one main crop:
the potato. It provided the nutrients needed to sustain the people and up to
6kg of the stuff was consumed per grown man each day. With the arrival of this
blight, it soon became clear that there was going to be a national emergency
pretty soon.
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A list of people
designated to receive
a package of meat
at Christmas |
But the
government in London wasted an abominable amount of time holding inquiries and
conducting research into the causes and the likely outcome of the potato blight.
Indeed, all this obfuscation and mindless wasting of precious time meant that
by the time a consensus had been reached, the whole island had been engulfed in
a horrific famine. In many parts of the island, it was reported that not a
single animal lived, and not a sound could be heard from the countryside. When
it was decided that action needed to be taken, Major Mahon thought shipping his
tenants off to Canada was the best course of action.
For that
reason, upon Mahon’s return in August 1847, he was a deeply unpopular man, and
the priest Father Michael McDermott, who Mahon had left in charge of the Relief
Committee in his absence, gave a vitriolic diatribe from his pulpit, accusing
Mahon of taking pleasure in turfing his tenants out and destroying their
properties to keep them from returning. It was claimed by a sitting Lord in
Westminster, raising the subject later on, that Father McDermott had denounced
Mahon as being “worse than Cromwell”, going on to add “yet he lives”.
This alone
was an inelegant and unintentional authorisation to remove Mahon by any means
necessary.
One thing
led to another and in early November of that year, Mahon was ambushed and
killed while riding home from a relief meeting. Four suspects were named and
pursued, but nobody actually admitted to the murder, and anyone who may have
known never came forward, such was the feeling of contempt towards Major Mahon.
One of the
suspects most likely to have been involved lamented the “accursed system” of
the secret society known as the Molly Maguires, who used to bring
turmoil and disorder wherever they went, and may have been instrumental in
Mahon’s murder. The Dubliners wrote a song about them, containing the lines:
“Make way
for the Molly Maguires,
They're drinkers, they're liars but they're men;
Make way for the Molly Maguires,
You'll never see the likes of them again.”
Major Mahon
is interred in a mausoleum in the grounds of Strokestown House, and was the
first of the landed gentry to be killed. His daughter, Grace, who was on her
honeymoon at the time of the murder, vowed never to set foot again at
Strokestown, so her new husband, Henry Sandford Pakenham, who himself came from
a family owning a vast amount of land, took on the administration of the
estate. Under his guidance, the huge debts accumulated by the Mahon family were
paid off, but the evictions and dispatching of tenants continued.
The
Pakenham-Mahon family remained owners of Strokestown House right up until 1979,
when it was sold to the Westward Group, a large enterprise with a greatly
varied portfolio. Since then, they have invested a significant amount of funds
into restoring the estate. It was the logical site of the National Famine
Museum because of the events I described, but also because when the Westward
Group took over the estate, they found a colossal number of records, letters
and artifacts from the time, enough to turn it into the most evocative and illuminating
museum I have been in for many years.
One of the
most shameful parts of this story was the way the British government handled
it: the strict adherence to procedures that led to more suffering and the miserly
way the British treated the Irish through introducing levies and tariffs on Irish
exports meant for their salvation, they were totally dependent on the very rulers
who chose to treat them as competitors and suppress them.
The fact
that it has won several prizes comes as no surprise: it has been meticulously
restored and everything that could be displayed is there for all to see. I
wholeheartedly recommend a trip to Strokestown House if you are in the area,
and make sure you set aside a good half-day as there’s a lot to take in.
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| A plan of Strokestown from the period |
We arrived
on a rather grim, wet autumn afternoon. Coming through the town outside the
gates, a pretty and lively place with a wide boulevard leading up to the
premises, it gave off an air of a bygone era of enormous wealth and prestige.
It reminded me a little of the streets outside Het Loo in Apeldoorn or the
Palais de Versailles with their avenues all pointing to the main residence in
the area. The domain itself was situated at the end of a long and
well-asphalted driveway where the car park overflow had reached the front of
the main building. There were evidently a lot of people who had the same idea
as us.
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Dedication to
the Choctaw |
We parked
and went in through an ultra-modern portal into a very welcoming foyer area
with a gift shop and a café with woodland views just through the back. After
consulting the receptionist at front desk, it was clear she loved her job. She
gave us multiple suggestions including a Samhain walk for kids through the wooded
grounds that went round in a spyglass pattern.
We went to
the café first as it was lunchtime and we were hungry. They had a proper
selection of food, which is one of my chief requirements when I visit a public
building: what’s on the menu, and is it fresh? They passed very well – my
second positive impression. We went back to the reception and opted for the
main museum and the Children’s Samhain Walk.
Passing
through a courtyard that contained a memorial of thanks to the Choctaw people
of North America for coming to the assistance of the Irish in the Famine, I
could instantly tell that this was going to be an intense experience. From the
moment you walk in the main museum, you are greeted with texts and artifacts in
chronological order explaining the story, the main points of which I explained
earlier in this article.
A few weeks
ago, Dainoris and Milda had asked us about the history of Ireland and Bonny Bee
had found a series of images from the 1800s including those of the hardships,
so they were aware of this period of time. Now they were in the museum, they
went round the pictures and maps asking all sorts of pertinent questions and
for the first time they didn’t hurry from room to room, like they did at Dublin
Castle recently. It was an exceptionally gratifying experience, and they
deserved their Children’s Samhain Walk.
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| The museum did a great job with the woodland |
Despite the
rain, we trudged through the woodland area with a map containing some blank
spaces to be filled in to win a prize. They had really thought the whole thing
through because there were lots of informative placards explaining the origins
of Samhain all round the course. The woodland area itself was also pleasingly landscaped
and planned: native trees, some obviously very old, lined the trail. Back at the
museum, we got our prizes and went back to the café to warm up and have
dessert. They had such a terrific selection of cakes and biscuits, it was
difficult to choose which one. And the day was still fairly young… what to do?
I suggested
paying a short visit to Rathcroghan Archaeological Site, just down the road. It
was in this area of over 500 hectares with 60 individual monuments and 20 ring
forts, that Samhain was first conceived, which then spawned Halloween. The
period around 31 October-1 November has for centuries been associated with death
and remembering ancestors. These days, the church has of course gentrified it
into the time of year when descendants visit the graves of their predecessors
and reverentially drop off a few flowers.
But it is a
sanitised and rather pious interpretation of this time of year.
Samhain
always marked the end of the year, when the fecundity of the spring and summer
turned into autumn and then into winter. Very often the inhabitants would have
saved all the fruit they didn’t eat and put it in underground storage – peat
was a very good pantry in those days. By the time they took it out, the fruit
would have fermented and turned alcoholic. Mixed with some ground grain, it
would turn into a centrepiece for a midwinter feast to celebrate the turning of
the darkness into light. This is where those Christmas sweets come in – they
are direct descendants of early humankind’s marking of the seasons.
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| Livia takes her own route |
Let us focus
on Samhain for a moment: it is said that this time of the year is when the veil
between this life and the one beyond is at its thinnest. It is said we can
communicate more easily with our ancestors and deceased loved ones during
Samhain. If you think talking to the dead is a bit fanciful, ask a Catholic
priest – they do all kinds of acts to communicate with the dead, mainly
so-called “saints” and beatified figures they feel worthy of being addressed. The
pre-Christian folk did that but to people they actually knew.
And at this
place, with so many standing stones and circles, the calendars were marked and observed
by the people. It helped them know when to plant, when to reap, mow, sow, dig,
and prepare for what was to come. They even made babies according to the
calendar, so that the majority of pregnancies had a good chance to last during
the gentler summer months. They were also used for ceremonies to mark the
passage of time and to celebrate or commemorate. They probably held feasts
during times of abundance and convened gatherings there during times of
scarcity or war.
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| The view due south from the top of the mound |
One of the
reasons women were in charge more than at any point since the Church took over
is because of their biological faculties. They had the power to populate
villages, so they would take matters into their own hands. Marriage was (and
kind of still is) a root of population decline, and they weren’t always a
prerequisite. Morals have always been open to interpretation and for sure they fit
the times and the conditions, but it’s really much more about necessity than
about developed-world trends and expectations. Back then, it was about survival
more than anything else, so women would aim to get pregnant by any means.
After
Christianity spread, morals concerning sex were very much guided by people who
often chose to be celibate. They berated and vilified the people adhering to
the old ways: one of the reasons why the stereotype of a demon is a horned,
red-faced pitchfork-wielding creature is because the Christian clergy would
point at ruddy-faced peasants out in the land, turning the soil with their
forks. They would often have skulls of animals like goats or deer near the
entrances of their houses, hence the horns. This was how the Church cajoled
society into abandoning ways they had grown accustomed to for generations.
They took
the old pagan festivals and spun them into stories about their own deity. Samhain,
the festival commemorating the dead, became “All Hallows’ Day” and “All Saints’
Day”; Yule, the darkest time of the year when there were fires and feasts
celebrating the returning of the light, became Christmas, when a symbolic light
was personified and came to take us from so-called “darkness”; and the festival
of fertility and rebirth named after the Germanic goddess Ostara and the Anglo-Saxon
goddess Eostre, possibly going back to the Greek Eos and maybe even to the Akkadian
goddess Ishtar, became Easter, when another kind of rebirth was foisted in to
replace the original one.
Out with
nature, the seasons, astronomy and agriculture, and in with a calendar centred
around a story about some strangers in a faraway land and agreed upon by people
who had never set foot in a muddy field. They would spend centuries proselytising
and moralising, shaming and cajoling non-believers to join their flocks. They
would send kings and armies to invade their Holy Land, send emissaries to
far-off countries to overpower and enforce their book upon the people, causing
untold amounts of death, pain and indignity on people from Aztec Mexico to the
rainforests of Africa. Hundreds of thousands fell victim to enslavement and
deracination, all due to the insistence that the deity being introduced to them
was the one and only.
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Select to expand
and read the text |
What do
these two stories tell us?
Firstly,
that those with the power to do so will direct the narrative in their favour,
no matter how much damage they may have inflicted. Nobody has ever brought criminal
charges against any Witchfinder, Conquistador, or English landowner for their
roles in the respective calamities they were responsible for. Indeed, many of
the Popes and Crusaders that foisted their religion on everyone in the name of
“enlightenment”, killing, displacing, enslaving, or expelling the folk from
their lands were elevated to sainthood, or at least beatified by their patrons. Some
even had cities, provinces and countries named after them. They were quite within their rights to act with total impunity as it just took
too long for history to catch up to their crimes.
The one
thing that democracy has brought us is the ability to bring charges against
those responsible for causing harm and to act as a dam holding up the waters of
decline and deprivation. They don’t always get justice done, but it’s the best
we have. Over the years, many people have been brought out of their rudimentary
conditions and elevated to a higher standard of living. The fundamental
principles of a functioning democracy is its aspiration to continual
development and advancement of its society. But this doesn’t always mean it’s
the best thing for everyone – most civilisations get on with their own thing
far better just by being left alone to sort it out.
How would
Ireland have fared if it had been left to its own devices? We’ll never know,
but my guess is maybe something like a warmer version of Iceland but maybe with
its monarchs. Imagine if the Incas or the Aztecs had been able to ward off the
Spanish: would they be a superpower now? How about religion? The last country
to remain pagan was Lithuania, and it still has a thriving community today. It
is possible that the old gods of Ireland would have been more relevant for much
longer. They are making quite a comeback these days, so it’s not totally lost.
More on that another time.
The day we
visited Rathcroghan, it was a windy, blustery afternoon approaching darkness. Nevertheless,
it made an impression on us all as the view from the top was indisputably breathtaking,
and we all understood the significance of the site. We will return when the
weather is more clement. What the visits to these two places taught us
personally is that our ancestors paid heavy prices for us to have what we do
today, and it would be unwise or even foolish to think that a dose of autocracy
or outside interference is what we need. Considering what happened to the
Irish, it most definitely is not.
Turnips used to be used in Ireland as Jack O'Lanterns until the Americans used pumpkins. The final photo shows a fairy door in one of the trees.
