This is a fairly remote area and after the busy touristy Westport, and points south, that we travelled yesterday, we loved North Mayo. The walk took us through the town and up the cliffs. This is a very different coastline than the Antrim coast as these cliffs are eroding, so we couldn’t venture as close to the edge.
The views improved as we walked through bog land to the north. The land has been covered by Atlantic blanket bog for over 4000 years. Bacteria cannot survive in these extremely wet conditions; therefore, the dead plant material cannot be broken down. The buildup of compressed plant material causes peat to form. The bog is 90% water and the peat can be 10 feet deep. The peat is cut, dried and used as source of heat. Peat does not smoke as much as wood, and it has a pleasant scent. The peat bog continues to grow at a rate of 1/8th inch per year.
The walk took us approximately 2.5 hours and then we looped back to the village. This was a wonderful walk with terrific views and we had some sun, and then cloud and the ever present wind.
Pile of cut peat
We then continued driving west along the North Mayo coast to Ballycastle, I asked an elder woman walking down the sidewalk where to go for coffee, and she directed us to the only café that was open. It was a very old fashioned place, but it was very busy. We ordered milky coffee, it was quite good, although we never did figure out what ‘milky coffee’ really was. After our break we drove on to Downpatrick Head.
The headland of Downpatrick Head is made up of hundreds of layers of various sediments, including: sandstones, shales and limestones. They were layered in a shallow sea, 300 million years ago.
The sea erodes the cliffs and sea caves form. Inevitably, some massive waves will block the mouth of the sea cave, and push inward. This creates tremendous air pressure to build up and vent through the cracks and fissures, causing the cliff to collapse into the sea, which creates a blowhole. Eventually, the cave roof will collapse leaving a land-bridge. When the land-bridge collapses, only a sea stack will remain off the headland.
The blowhole on St. Patrick’s head is called Poll a’ Sean Tine. We met a local family walking the headland, and they told us it was too bad that the tide was not in. When the tide is in, the water flies out of the blowhole and it is spectacular.
The sea stack Dun Briste, stands over 164 feet in height and is nearly 300 feet off Downpatrick Head. There is a ruin of an ancient residence on the surface and there was once a land-bridge connecting it to the mainland. It was written that the land-bridge was washed away in a hurricane in 1393, and the residents had to be rescued.
Poll a’ Sean Tine - The Blowhole
Dun Briste - The Seastack
A sea cave has formed in the cliff
The history of Ireland continues: The Famine Part III
Many landlords were heavily in debt prior to the famine and thus faced insolvency due to lost rents, the poor rates, and spending on employment; as a result, land values plunged. The situation was made worse by the encumbered estates law, which forced the sale of indebted estates for fire-sale prices and speculators were the winners. The British government had hoped that English capitalists would invest in Irish land, but that did not occur, as it was the Irish who bought up the land.
The change in the size of landholdings after the famine was striking, as a lot of consolidation took place after the poor tenants and labourers were thrown out. Grazing land was expanded, and land was sold to new settlers from England and Scotland for cattle production. There was severe resentment toward these new settlers.
Emigration had been ongoing in Ireland prior to the famine, between 1700 and 1776, 100,000 emigrated to the USA, mostly Ulster Presbyterians. When mass death resulted from starvation in 1847, there was a panic exodus, which resulted in a high number of the poorest emigrating. Since passage on British ships to Canada was cheaper than passage to the USA, many of the most destitute opted for Canada, 45% of the passengers on those ships were the most poverty stricken. The vessels came to be known as ‘coffin ships,’ due to high death rates at sea. Many of the emigrants were already sick due to overcrowding in disease infested ports, while they waited for passage. Conditions on British ships were horrendous and completely inhumane; conditions on American ships were much better, but still abysmal. The death rate on passage to Canada in 1847 was approximately 30%. Conditions improved from 1848 onward, as the death rate on ships to Canada fell to close to 1%.
By the end of the famine in 1851, one million people had died, and a further two million emigrated, mostly to the USA, smaller numbers emigrated to Canada and Britain. After the famine, emigration remained high, so that by 1871, 3 million had left and by 1921, 8 million people who were born in Ireland, were living elsewhere, mostly in the USA.
The agricultural labourer virtually disappeared from the landscape as a result of the famine and mass emigration. Ireland became an emigrant society where practically everyone colluded to ship out the surplus population, to the benefit of those remaining. To secure the family farm, only the eldest son would inherit, so the other sons and daughters, emigrated. The average emigrant was age 20 - 24, single and reluctant to return to Ireland. Many sent money or prepaid passage tickets back to Ireland for their families. The majority of the Irish who emigrated settled in urban areas.
The ongoing debate with regard to the famine was whether or not it was an act of genocide, perpetrated by the British government. The response of the British government ranged from grossly inefficient to callous, but there is no historical evidence to suggest that there was genocidal intent. A key point for me in reading about the famine, after I got past my initial emotional storm over the suffering of the people, and my exasperation with the pitiful response on the part of the British, was the question of food exports versus food imports. The charge of genocide is based on the notion that Ireland was producing enough food to feed her people, but that the food was exported to Britain.
However, food exports from Ireland during the famine were well below normal, as the majority of the corn crop was consumed in Ireland. Grain exports declined as well as the grain had to be kept to feed the cattle and pigs, whereas previously, the pigs consumed potato plants. In 1847 and 1848, the total imports of Indian corn and meal from North America vastly exceeded the exports from Ireland. The blight destroyed 60% of the food in Ireland, that gap would not have been filled if all grain produced in Ireland was held. The import and export statistics puts to rest, the notion that the famine was a genocide. Most professional historians recognize that one million people should never have died of starvation, as they lived in a political union with one of the world’s wealthiest nations at that time. The British press, politicians and public, held a cold and cavalier attitude toward the suffering of the Irish, this was completely outrageous, but does not come down as genocidal intent.
my opinion (for what it's worth) is that in regards to the british and genocide...i agree. but i do think the underlying intent was to obtain land. ireland has rich soil, and the british wanted to rule and did not want catholicism...Tracy
ReplyDeleteI am not sure, after the famine, the land wars resulted in the British gov't buying out land owners and distributing it to the farmers. They certainly did try to encourage English and Scots to buy land during the auctioning of the land of land owners who went bankrupt due to the lack of rents and poor rates during the famine, but it was the Irish who purchased the vast majority of the land.
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