27/01/2024
On the river Liffey in Dublin you’ll see some of the early roots of Irish America. These amazing and powerful Rowan Gillespie sculptures of the desperate, starving and emaciated ordinary Irish people who were cruelly forced out of their own country before, during and after the great Hunger of 1845 - 1852 and the great silence of the following decades as the country was turned upside down and the industrialists and landed gentry of the British ascendancy stood on and watched as the land was cleared for lucrative cattle grazing and food exports continued unabated as a million people died of starvation and the diseases caused by malnutrition or stripped of their dignity in the workhouses.
The ‘lucky ones’ managed to beg or borrow their way onto often hastily converted cargo ships, now converted for human cargo and god knows if you will survive the voyage at all!
And on the same island although it may well have been another planet we had these vast Georgian mansions stuffed to the brim with priceless antiques brought home from Grand tours of Europe, some of these homes were well over 100 years old by the time the potato crop was hit by the blight in 1845. Many of them were burned to the ground during our war of independence and never a tear was shed about that by any true Irish person.
Always remember where it all began, we don’t have fancy tall towers, we don’t have gilded Piazza’s, we don’t have Eiffel towers or leaning towers, we don’t even have a subway but we are ordinary people, respectful, resilient, brave and proud people as proven in our history and we wouldn’t exchange that for anything!