Legacy of The Great Irish Famine - The Famine in Song

The Famine in Song

The Famine is also commemorated in song, both from the period and from modern times. Irish novelist and songwriter, Brendan Graham has written a number of novels and songs on An Gorta Mor – the Great Irish Famine. His book publishing deal with Harper Collins originated from a number of songs he had written about An Gorta Mor, resulting in the publication of his best selling 'documentary novel' of the Famine - The Whitest Flower (HarperCollins, London, Sydney, Toronto, 1998). The Sunday Times, Canberra called The Whitest Flower - 'An important addition to the Irish national story'. The Whitest Flower, with its song 'soundtrack', was a required text for Boston's MIT Women's Studies Course. Along with its sequel The Element of Fire (HarperCollins, 2001), The Whitest Flower was also listed as 'support fiction' for Ireland's Leaving Certificate, History syllabus.

"The Voice" written by Brendan Graham and performed by Eimear Quinn won the 1996 Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland. The lyrics refer to Ireland's troubled history and point clearly to Famine times in Ireland, I am The Voice of your hunger and pain.

'I am the voice of the past that will always be
Filled with my sorrow and blood in my fields
I am the voice of the future
Bring me your peace, bring me your peace
And my wounds they will heal
I am the voice in the wind and the pouring rain
I am the voice of your hunger and pain
I am the voice that always is calling you
I am the voice.

As well as entering the British Pop Charts, The Voice was one of the songs studied for the UK GCSE Music Syllabus, 1998. Eimear Quinn's version featured in the Pierce Brosnan movie - The Nephew, while the song found a new life in America with the recording and widespread PBS broadcasting of it as part of the group Celtic Woman's rise to prominence there. Author and sociologist E. Moore Quinn in her book ‘Irish American Folklore in New England’, published in 2009, quotes the full lyric of The Voice.

"The Fairhaired Boy" - This song written by Brendan Graham was recorded by Cathy Jordan and Dervish on their 2003 album, ‘Spirit’. Carmel Conway also recorded the song on her 2009 album ‘This Beautiful Day’. It is also performed in the ‘Cois Tine - Stories of Liam O' Flaherty’ - by singer and violinist Fionnuala Howard. A song of emigration from Ireland during Famine times, The Fairhaired Boy tells of the sorrow of parting - 'Soon you'll in California be or Colorado bound'. In The Whitest Flower, Graham's heroine Ellen sings the song to Roberteen, a young neighbour from Ireland whom she finds dying in the lazaretto (fever shed) at Canada's Quarantine Island of Grosse Ile. The song is written in a traditional narrative style song form where there are no choruses, the hook of the song being contained in the last line of each stanza with the pull of the story being used to keep the listener's interest alive.

'Oh, my fair-haired boy, no more I'll see
You walk the meadows green;
Or hear your song run through the fields
Like yon mountain stream
Your ship waits on the western shore
To bear you o'er from me;
But wait I will till Heaven's door-
My fair-haired boy to see'.

"Crucán na bPáiste" - 'the burial place of (unbaptised) children' - lies on a hilltop in Maamtrasna, Co.Mayo, overlooking Lough Nafooey, and Lough Mask in Ireland. It is a lament by a mother for a child she buries there during Aimsir an Drochshaoil (‘The Time of the Bad Life’ - the Famine). The song was written by Graham for Ellen Rua, one of the characters in his second novel, The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night, also published by Harper Collins. It has been recorded and performed by a number of artistes most notably Karen Matheson (as part of the Transatlantic Sessions), Cathy Jordan of Dervish and Eimear Quinn. Graham reveals the story of how the song came to be written in his Sunday Miscellany radio piece for RTE, called Effin' Songs, recorded live in Ireland's National Concert Hall, with Eimear Quinn and the RTE Concert Orchestra and piper Neil Martin, following with the song itself.

"Crucán na bPáiste had become a claw in my gut - and my pilgrimage. Over many months it inched out in me its cry...focal by focal...line by line...until I was set free and it had found its epiphany. I had learned to keep out of the way...let the song write itself. This, I suppose is the real answer to the question with which we started. The truly special songs write us...we don't write them; we don't find them...they find us".

'Is briste mo chroí, is uaigneach mo shlí
Is mo stóirín in a luí is mé cráite;
‘S é deireadh mo shaol, is mo chailín beag rua
Sínte i gCrucán na bPáiste
(Broken my heart, lonely my life
With my darling child lying here and me tormented
It is the end of my world, my little red-haired girl
Laid out in Crucán na bPáiste)'.

Another of Graham’s Famine songs, "Ochón an Gorta Mor / Lament of the Great Hunger", was commissioned by the Irish Government, as part of the Ceól Reoite (Frozen Music - after Goethe’s 'Architecture is frozen music') Millenial Project. Fourteen Irish composers were asked to pick a monument of national significance and to write a piece of music/song which would release from it the music frozen within. Graham chose the Curvilinear Glasshouses at Dublin's National Botanic Gardens, constructed at the time of An Gorta Mor, by monies diverted from research to find a cure for the potato blight afflicting Ireland. The glasshouses looked down over the Gardens' 'vegetable patch', where the blight was first discovered in Ireland in August, 1845. Graham has described the 'frozen music' locked within the architecture of the Curvilinear Glasshouses as 'a lament for a famished people'. A song for unaccompanied voice it has been recorded by Róisín Elsafty, on the Ceól Reoite album and as a 'hidden track' by Cathy Jordan on the Dervish album, Spirit . The song was also performed by Nuala Ní Chanainn in the 2002 production of Aistir/Voyage by the Swiss- based, Cathy Sharp Dance Ensemble.

'Ochón, ochón
Ochón, Aimsir an Drochshaoil
Ochón, ochón
Ochón an Gorta Mór
Alas, alas
Lament the time of the Famine
Alas, Alas
Lament the Great Hunger'.

"You Raise Me Up"- It was in fact reading Graham’s novel The Whitest Flower, that led Norwegian composer, Rolf Lovland to contact Graham with a melody. This melody in turn inspired Graham to write the lyric -You Raise Me Up, which has been recorded by some 400 artists (including Westlife, Josh Groban, Brian Kennedy and Secret Garden, Daniel O’Donnell, Helene Fischer, Il Divo, Russell Watson and Paul Potts) and has become one of the most successful songs in popular music history.

'There is no life, no life without its hunger,
Each restless heart beats so imperfectly;
But when you come and I am filled with wonder,
Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity.
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up... To more than I can be.

Brendan Graham has also recently written a number of integrated song and narrative pieces including Writing the Famine in Fiction and Song, for The National Famine Commemoration Week in Ireland, 2010. This was narrated by the author with songs performed by Cathy Jordan accompanied on piano by Feargal Murray.

In Quebec, 2011, his shorter narrative and song piece - From Famine to Freedom - Ireland to Grosse Ile - was performed by the Quebec Symphony Orchestra and soloist Méav Ní Mhaolchatha, with Graham's narration translated into French. It included a first performance with orchestra of The Whitest Flower, Graham's title song for the soundtrack to his book. In response to the view handed down at the time of Ireland's Famine that “The judgement of God…sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated”(Charles E. Trevelyan - Permanent Assistant Secretary at the British Treasury with prime responsibility for Famine relief in Ireland), Graham's song calls to task a vengeful God:-

'Oh, God in Heaven, did you this flower send,
Is this your vengeance for how your people have sinned?
Oh, God in Heaven is this your Judgement Day -
All you have given now you have taken away?

I have seen the Whitest Flower,
Bloom in every field:
Death is in the Whitest Flower,
We are cursed and our fate is sealed.

The famous modern song on the famine is "The Fields of Athenry", by Pete St. John. Written in three verses, it deals with a fictitious but realistic story of "Michael" being deported to Botany Bay for stealing corn to feed his starving family. Performed in folk, traditional and even reggae versions, it is often sung by supporters of Glasgow's Celtic F.C., many of whom are of Irish descent. The song itself sums up the sense of despair, anger and bitterness of famine victims. The song was also covered by Boston punk rock band, the Dropkick Murphys on their 2003 Blackout album.

Luka Bloom's song 'Forgiveness' from his album Salty Heaven is sung from the point of view of an Irish Famine refugee who has relocated to Canada and who despite his suffering has chosen forgiveness over bitterness.

Luka Bloom's brother Christy Moore also has a song, written by Bloom but recorded by Moore, called 'The City of Chicago,' that chronicles the effects of the Famine and the subsequent mass emigration.

Pagan metal band Primordial also have a song about the Famine named "The Coffin Ships" on their 2005 album The Gathering Wilderness.

Another related song is "Famine" by Sinéad O'Connor, released on the Universal Mother album. The lyrics emphasize the political aspect of the famine.