History Briefs: Patrick Hickey focuses on one of the most shocking theatres of the Great Famine. The Mizen Peninsula lost 38 per cent of its population between 1841 and 1849. Father Hickey's exhaustive research introduces people who do not feature in general histories of the Famine.
He is on less sure ground when surveying the wider vista. For instance, Sir Charles Wood was Chancellor of the Exchequer and an architect of the Whig relief policy - not secretary to the Treasury.
F.F. Trench, a Protestant clergyman from Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary, organised "eating-houses" to feed 15,000 people in the Mizen Peninsula. The parish priest estimated that between October 1846 and May 1847, a quarter of the population of Ballydehob was swept away by famine and disease; mortality would perhaps have doubled but for "the noble and God-like exertions and benevolence of F.F. Trench".
A year and a half later, Trench fell victim to compassion fatigue. True to the form of his controversial cousin W.S. Trench, agent of the Lansdowne estate in Kerry, he evicted about 250 children, women and men. As the crisis lingered and the struggle for survival intensified, the hearts of landlords and a traditionally hospitable people turned cold.
The chapter on souperism is the liveliest in this chronicle. A clergyman named William Fisher saved many lives by arranging the distribution of food supplies. More controversially, he weaned large numbers of famine-stricken people from "Romanism".
The agents of the "Second Reformation", although denying they bribed the people with food, admitted to taking advantage of the Famine, which was perceived as administering a liberating shock. One member of the Irish Society wrote a pamphlet entitled 'The Blessing of Blight'.
Hickey estimates that 11 out of 13 resident clergymen made varying degrees of effort to gain converts during and after the Famine. One honourable exception was Robert Traill, who features on the cover of this book. The rector of Schull and J.M. Synge's grandfather, he died of fever.
While Protestant missionaries used the Irish language, the equally vigorous "Second Counter-Reformation" was led by Vincentians from Dublin. As in other regions along the western seaboard, proselytism had significant if transient success. Although the total population of Kilmoe parish decreased by 34 per cent, its Protestant population increased by at least 22 per cent.
The forces of evangelical Protestantism and Ultramontane Catholicism fought with unholy zeal over the souls of the poor. Be that as it may, they kept food supplies flowing, however inadequately. If the British state had made comparable efforts to temper Irish nationalism with kindness, fewer lives would have been lost, and Michael Collins might not have been singing Revenge for Skibbereen on the eve of his assassination.
The Society for the Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland arose from the Famine hecatomb in 1851. Its president was George Petrie; council members included Eugene O'Curry and William Wilde; one of its secretaries was the Young Irelander, John Edward Pigot. The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland (1855) was its only publication, which makes this new edition all the more welcome.
In the early 19th century, the Royal Irish Academy nurtured an intellectual interest in native antiquity which, paradoxically, fostered romantic nationalism rather than the colonial nationalism of its founders. Petrie's antiquarian and archaeological work led to membership in 1828. For 40 years, he collected melodies when sketching, while working for the Ordnance Survey, or during holidays. O'Curry, who shared his love for traditional music, accompanied him on a number of folk-collecting excursions.
Petrie revered traditional music, not simply as the voice of the dispossessed, but because it symbolised an idealised state of grace in which man was at one with nature.
Although Anglican and apolitical, he regarded himself as an Irish patriot. He noted in a journal, furthermore, that Ireland could glory in the possession of such music, "but she will exult more when freedom shall bid her indulge the proud feelings that of right belong to her". He was a close friend of Thomas Davis and lived next door in Dublin to another co-founder of the Nation, John Blake Dillon.
The "awful, unwonted silence, which during the Famine and subsequent years almost everywhere prevailed", impelled him to complete his work before the anglicisation of the country: "Of the old, who had still preserved the language, the songs and traditions of their race and their localities, but few survived . . . The land of song was no longer tuneful; or, if a human sound met the traveller's ear, it was only that of the feeble and despairing wail for the dead."
Petrie devoted his life to promoting knowledge of Irish antiquity. His book is regarded as one of the most important 19th-century collections of Irish music. It contains nearly 200 melodies and texts of songs in Irish and English, with notes about their provenance. As David Cooper remarks in his excellent introduction, Petrie "brought scholarship, enthusiasm and the love of the amateur to the study of what was widely seen as barbaric and uncivilised music". In doing so, he helped to lay the foundations of the traditional music revival.
Brendan Ó Cathaoir is a historian and Irish Times journalist
Famine in West Cork: The Mizen Peninsula: Land and People, 1800-1852. By Patrick Hickey. Mercier, 424pp. €40.
The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland. Edited by David Cooper. Cork University Press, 298pp. €60.