Fr Michael Collins sees pilgrimages to Ireland of the descendants of potato famine emigrants.
The view from Galway out to sea is always mesmerising. On a fine day, the Aran Islands come into view, shimmering in shades of green and azure. On a wet windy day, when the sea whips in flecks from the Atlantic, there is still a majesty in the clouds which rear up high into the sky before discharging rain across the west of Ireland. For many Irish people in the past, the coast of Galway was the last piece of land they saw as they sailed west, to begin a new life in America. In Galway they say that on a fine day you can see the Statue of Liberty.
During the pandemic, tourist traffic came to an abrupt halt, a hiatus which lasted over two years. Now Irish-American heritage tourism to visit “the old sod” is back on track. During 2023, over 2.6 million tourists will visit Ireland, many of them American pilgrims in search of their ancestors.
In late August, Cardinal Timothy Dolan led a pilgrimage from New York archdiocese to Ireland. Dubbed “From St Patrick’s to St Patrick’s” it linked the famous cathedral on Fifth Avenue with the cathedral at Armagh, which this year celebrates its 150th anniversary. A name like Dolan is always going to boast Irish ancestors. Every day of the pilgrimage, the voluble cardinal broadcast a two-minute reflection of the day’s events on the new diocesan app, The Good Newsroom.
The 10-day pilgrimage began with the Eucharist celebrated in a glen near Killarney, where Catholics attended Mass during a period of persecution. The pilgrimage, along the West Coast, included Masses in Dingle, Ballintubber Abbey in Co Clare, Knock Basilica and Tullamore convent, concluding at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh.
There is a growing market also for religious pilgrimages which take in the great monastic sites such as Glendalough, Clonmacnoise, Clonard and Monasterboice. Newgrange, the site of a Neolithic tomb, dates back over 5,200 years, making it older than the pyramids and Stonehenge. The shrine of Knock, where Our Lady, St Joseph and St John appeared to 15 villagers in August 1879, is also popular.
I met with John Hale, President of Corporate Travel Services, based in Detroit. His company organised Cardinal Dolan’s group visit.
“Our company has the privilege of bringing many groups to Ireland every year. We bring families, couples, church groups, choirs and even golf groups to Ireland routinely and still have four or five groups who will visit yet this year. There seems an insatiable appetite for our clients to visit the Emerald Isle.”
Rachel Gaffney, originally from Cork, has lived in the USA for three decades. In 2002 she founded her company Real Ireland, based in Dal-las, which organises bespoke tours to Ireland. One thing has struck her: the improvement in Irish cuisine.
“We have wonderful produce, and it has been long underestimated,” she told me. Like Corporate Travel Services, her company specialises in accommodating guests in castles, stately homes and even in former episcopal residences which have been turned into fine hotels.
Fishing, shooting, horse-riding, shopping sprees, cookery classes, pottery classes, dances – all of these are on offer across the country, as well as Mass and church visits.
For many Irish-Americans, their roots lie in being part of the great Irish diaspora of the 19th century of which many are justly proud. Up to a million Irish people left the country as a famine decimated one of the staple crops, the humble potato. In 1845, the potato crop failed. At first, farmers were not greatly worried as blight had often affected the crop. But the crops continued to fail, most notably in the summer of 1847.
With the sudden collapse of an important food source, the people were left with few resources for cheap food.
Pope Pius IX urged Catholics to collect money to send to the starving people of Ireland, and in March 1847 wrote an encyclical on behalf of the suffering Irish.
English Protestants contributed the largest amount to famine relief outside Ireland.
While half the population was dependent on the potato crop, the remaining portion were far better off. Most shared with the poor, but by the time the famine ended in 1852, one million had perished and close on two million had emigrated.
Migrants from the east coast headed for Wales, while those to the north went to Scotland.
For those who lived on the west coast, America was the more realistic, if longer and more dangerous option. The fortunate ones scraped the passage to America in the hopes of survival and a new start. The ships were grimly known as “coffin-ships”, and only the hardy landed in the New World.
Historical records confirm that as many as one and a half million Irish refugees landed in North America between 1848-60, mostly through New York. Records are inexact as officials could not spell the Irish names and the registers kept at the port were not reliable. New York, Chicago and Boston absorbed the bulk of the immigrants.
Soon they settled, married among themselves or into the wider American population, making a significant impact on the cultural landscape of their new homeland.
Last May I accompanied nine graduating students from Duquesne University, Pittsburg, on a cultural visit to the West of Ireland. We visited the well-known sites such as the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands but the place which the students voted as the most interesting was a visit to Cnoc Suain in Connemara.
We were guests of Dearbhaill Standún and her husband Charlie Troy who run a group of traditional thatched cottages. Dearbhaill explained that the night or two before the departure of the neighbours who had decided to emigrate, the American wake was held.
A wake usually takes place the night before a funeral when neighbours visit the family to offer condolences. Although a sad affair, it was often lightened by song and poetry, a tobacco pipe and a few drams of alcohol.
In the case of the American wake, it was a farewell to family members who were unlikely ever to meet again.
While many failed to keep up with their Irish families back home, one way that contact was maintained was the “American parcel”. This became a symbol of spirit for the Irish who now made their home in the New World.
Throughout the year, the Irish migrants saved their dimes to buy presents for the family at home. Neighbours often shared parcels. Once they arrived in Ireland, they were opened in the local Post Office and the recipients were alerted. A pair of shoes, bought in New York, were passed around until somebody’s feet fitted into them. It was not unusual for women to parade in light summer clothes in January, to demonstrate that their relatives had “made it in America”.
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