The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People

<i>The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People</i> was a well researched and documented history of the Irish Potato Famine beginning in 1845 when a fungus-like organism spread rapidly throughout Ireland, and ran rampant over the next several years, causing suffering and death throughout Ireland. John Kelly documents all facets of this suffering from the accounts of the families that are impacted to the government entities that so dramatically failed these people. This was a heartbreaking account of starvation and suffering as brought to life by Kelly, as he meticulously narrates the essence of the individual lives that were affected and as a witness to our humanity.<br /><br /><i>"In this 'Hidden Ireland,' Irish remained the first language: myth and legend attached itself to every feature of the landscape; the storyteller and the poet remained revered figures; and the old Irish families--the dispossessed 'ancient race'--were remembered and honored."<br /><br />"In ten thousand townlands--in Kerry, in Clare, in Donegal, in Mayo and Roscommon: places as impoverished, overcrowded, and potato-dependent as southwest Cork--other 'little families' awaited death in cabins, in fields, and in roadside scalps and ditches. History has made fatalism a habit of mind in Ireland."<br /><br />". . . The <i>Belfast Vindicator</i> raised the specter of universal famine. No one would escape the effects of what was coming, the paper warned. 'The cry is heard in every corner of the island. It startles and appalls the merchant at his desk, the landlord in his office, the scholar in his study, the lawyer in his stall, the minister in his council room, and the priest at the altar.'" "Give us food or we will perish."<br /><br />"In 1846, emigration, though large--116,000 people left Ireland--had had an orderly character. By the spring of 1847, people were not leaving Ireland; they were fleeing, the way a crowd flees a burning building: heedlessly, recklessly, with no thought other than to get out."</i>

I wanted to like this book. I had planned to read it for quite a while but there were many books ahead of it. I recall listening to a program on RTE radio which featured Tim Pat Coogan, John Kelly, a descendant of Trevelyan, and another woman author whose name escapes me. At the time, Kelly came off as rather conservative on the issue of genocide but I wanted to read what he had to say before passing any judgment. I have studied the Famine, written papers on it, and read other books, including The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham Smith. I have not read Coogan's book because I know his ideas on it. <br />I had also read Kelly's other book on the Plague.<br /><br />Unfortunately, I found this book to be a great disappointment on several levels. First, although many reviewers commented on how well documented the book was, and to all outward appearances it would seem to be, when one takes a closer look, it is not. Second, the book relies on anecdotal evidence to make historical points, all too often. Third, in addition to jumping around in time, Kelly also goes off on subjects only tangentially related to the Famine. Fourth, the story he is trying to tell is incomplete (maybe because of all his tangents). Finally, Kelly's conclusions are not supported by the facts. <br /><br />While the book is interesting and Kelly is obviously quite clever, much of his documentation is of anecdotal information and not statistics. For example, on page 318, Kelly provides a collection of statistics about public aid during 1846 and 1847. This is immediately after he made mention of the ship that carried the remains of Daniel O'Connell back to Ireland. If one goes to his notes, the only documentation is for the boat- but there is nothing documenting the statistics. In the course of my reading, I noticed this on several occasions. Even his claim toward the end of the book (I cannot recall the page) that Ireland imported more food than she exported during the Famine is unsupported. <br /><br />My second problem with the book is Kelly's reliance on anecdote to tell the story. Anecdote is a great thing- it's purpose is to provide examples of documented evidence. In this case, the author relied on newspapers of the time to do this. Unfortunately, he frequently used the anecdotes without any documentation that they are accurate. I was struck by his inclusion in a Cork paper, when describing men working building roads which gave an example of a couple Kerrymen, supposed to be building roads who were lazy and doing nothing. This may not be a big deal except that it feeds the stereotype that Brits had of the lazy Irish. Moreover, there is no way of knowing if it was true. For all the reader know, the men could have been starving and unable to work or maybe they were just lazy. We do not know. The author may also be unaware that there has always been a rivalry between the counties of Kerry and Cork that might have led to it. In any case, it had no place in the book without some support. <br /><br />Kelly also seemed unable to stick to the timeline and placeline in writing the book. He went off on tangents that were inconsequential to the Famine. What immigrants encountered when they reached new shores is very interesting and might have been appropriate but it really belongs in another book or at least a much longer book. Substantial amounts of information was left out of this book- presumably to share those details and it weakens the book. <br /><br />My fourth complaint is the fact that Kelly did not finish the book- or at least the story of the Famine. What he said about crop failure in 1848 was not complete. 1848 was probably the worst year of the famine and the crop failures were total. After the partial failure of the crop in 1845, the crop in 1846 totallly failed, as he said. His information about 1847 was incomplete. In 1847, the crop was disease free- for the most part. A large part of the reason for that was that many farmers hadn't planted potatoes out of fear of another failure. In 1848, potato planting was way up but the cropped failed- completely. By then the British had grown tired of the Irish and decided they would no longer help. The Quaker organizations that had been trying to help the desperate people grew tired of fighting with Whitehall and finally gave up. After that, the Irish were basically on their own. It is hard to understand why Kelly decided to devote so little time to this part of the disaster. I can only surmise that perhaps going into too much detail might undermine his conclusion. <br /><br />Finally, Mr. Kelly's conclusions are not supported by the facts. He seems to underplay that many of the Irish never dealt in money. They grew potatoes to sustain their own families but grain to pay the rent with. Kelly never mentions this fact. He does quote people many times talking about the Irish being lazy because they had to worry only about the potato crop which has a short growing season. By failing to include the facts about grain, he allows the argument of Irish laziness to stand. He never discusses the importance of Ireland being a barter economy plays in the famine. If people bartered to pay rent and other expenses, it doesn't matter how little the British government charges for corn, it is too expensive. Moreover, he makes little mention of the terrible effects the corn had on people. When it wasn't milled at least twice, it punctured the intestines of people. Trevelyan ordered that it not be milled at one point because it wasn't good for the morals of people. Given the evidence that the author himself put forward, saying that the British government meant well just doesn't cut it. It is odd that Kelly left out the comment of the economist Nassau Senior who expressed his worry that the famine might not kill more than a million people and that would hardly be enough. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="http://schillerinstitute.org/economy/nbw/pot_famine95.html">http://schillerinstitute.org/economy/...</a><br />Could it be that statements like that weaken his arguments? Kelly always fails to mention that at a time when the British argued that the government didn't have enough money for aid to Ireland, they did have enough money to send 15,000 British troops there. <br /><br />I am not arguing that the Famine was a genocide based on the narrow definition used to convict Hitler. The British did not cause the blight. Kelly makes mention of the fact that ports in other parts of Europe were closed during the entirety of the blight. It is not good enough to argue that Britain didn't because of their zeal for laissez faire economics. The deep rooted hatred of the Irish certainly had something to do with it. They hated the religion of the Irish and never understood them. After so many years, one would think that the English might have learned something about the Irish but they hadn't. As late as the 1980's when IRA prisoners went on hunger strike the British did not believe that the prisoners would actually starve themselves. There can be no question that Britain was guilty of cultural genocide. Since the days of Cromwell it had been an objective of the British to get rid of the language, the religion, and all identifiable traits of the Irish making them quasi British. While it may not be as straight a line to draw between the British and genocide during the Famine, there has to be some question of the intent of the British by their policies. Maybe they did not intentionally commit genocide but Kelly has certainly not proven that. <br /><br />This book is interesting. Kelly is witty and an able writer but the flaws aforementioned makes for disappointing reading. There are interesting details in this book which may not be found elsewhere so I might suggest reading it- but not until after reading a more thorough, better researched book. The Great Hunger remains, in my opinion, the best book available on the subject.

3 stars<br /><br />I was totally unprepared for this book. I read a lot of non-fiction, but usually what is now referred to as 'contemporary' or 'novel' non-fiction, which has it's facts put into an easy to read story-like format. This book was true non-fiction - textbook non-fiction. It took me chapters to meld with this book and the information that was being presented. <br /><br />Now saying the above, does not take away from the book. I feel it did a good job of explaining the Irish potato famine in the mid 1800's. It told of the extenuating problems brought on by the country overseers, detailing various ways that were used to keep the poor Irish at a disadvantage. Eviction, soaring costs, work houses, non-paying jobs were all used to 'up the character' of the impoverished Irish, to no avail. Political greed and religious doctrines caused more than 2 million people to flee their country and at least one million more deaths. <br /><br />I probably did not like this book as much as others. Over and above the dry text book feel to it, I became tired of it bouncing back and forth between the years of 1846 and 1847. I realize those 24 months were the most turbulent, but just when you were mired in something from 1847, then you were sent back to 1846 for something else. I also felt that there were an exceptional amount of secondary - or even lessor - characters that were introduced, which I did not feel carried any of the story. I am not sure that the epic amount of facts did not get in the way of telling the story. <br /><br />

This is a very well researched book about the potato famine in Ireland. It is a very powerful and compelling read.<br />It is the story of the great hunger in Ireland and its destruction.<br />This all started in 1845 and killed more then one million men women and children. At the time it was considered the greatest disaster in the 19th century.<br />This catastrophe started with potato fungus fueled with political greed and religious intolerance.<br />When I started to read this book, I thought I knew about the potato famine which devastated Ireland. <br />I was wrong. This book is not only about potatoes. It was about people’s lives.<br />“The Englishman’s hand is strong and harsh-<br /> the might of his laws and the slaughter of his victories-<br /> his promise is a lie, his blade bloody-<br /> and it is high time for me to flee across the sea.”<br />By the spring of 1847 people were not leaving Ireland, they were fleeing, the way a crowd flees a burning building.<br />215,000 people sailed to North America, 150,000 to Britain.<br />This book is filled with details and information about the life of the Irish people and all the hardships that they endured.<br />It is a very interesting read.

Thoughts soon.

Available as a two-part, 14-hour audio book download.<br /><br />Honor the suffering of millions of now-still voices and forgotten names of Ireland by listening to or reading their story in this narrative or one like it. It's more appropriate than drinking cheap beer in a green cardboard hat.<br /><br />Just like certain problems of today, the cause of the Irish potato famine (a fungus) was known, but the people who knew were insufficiently media-savvy and charming, so their voices were drowned out by people with wrong ideas but better communications networks. <br /><br />And, just like certain problems of today, certain broad clues pointing to the cure for the Irish potato famine (a chemical compound containing copper) hid heartbreakingly in plain sight. A non-expert wrote into a Welsh newspaper to note that the potato fields downwind of a local copper-processing plan remained strangely untouched by the blight. At the time, however, it was just an odd detail in a time of chaos and calamity. The signal was lost in the noise.<br /><br />Memo to self, inspired by this book: Listen to the people whom others are not listening to. It's patience-trying, but they might know something.<br />

Extremely well researched, this is a very detailed history of the The Great Famine of the 1840's. With a perfect storm of circumstances, a natural disaster (potato blight) in Ireland snowballed into a horrendous tragedy of famine, disease, and death to over a million people mainly in Ireland but also in England, US, and Canada as a result of mass exodus.<br /><br />I had known very little about the scope and scale of this tragedy, so this was an eye-opening read for me, to learn of the many factors that were at play: weather, world-wide food shortage, major mistakes of the British governance, Irish peasantry class dependency on potato crop, merchant class greed, and much more.<br /><br />The book was difficult to read at times with many grim descriptions of the poverty, starvation, disease, and death. But it's an important educational and illuminating book, and interesting to see the roots of major immigration of the Irish to England, North America and Australia.<br /> <br />

Although I didn't like this as much as Kelly's previous book on the Black Death, <i> <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/324494.The_Great_Mortality_An_Intimate_History_of_the_Black_Death__the_Most_Devastating_Plague_of_All_Time" title="The Great Mortality An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time by John Kelly" rel="noopener">The Great Mortality</a> </i>, it was certainly an absorbing read and a sobering one. I hadn't known much about the potato famine before reading this, but it wasn't one of those kind of books where prior knowledge was required to fully understand the text.<br /><br />The saddest thing of all about the story, I think, is that it wasn't anything evil that doomed the Irish. Contrary to what some people believe, no one was deliberately trying to starve the Irish to death. The British weren't practicing genocide like the Soviets did to Ukraine during the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor" rel="nofollow noopener">Holodomor</a>. Rather, it was a kind of Hurricane Katrina like situation: the government was trying to help, but it didn't have a clue what it was doing and ignorance and self-interest and misplaced priorities prevented any real progress from being made. And so millions died.<br /><br />Well worth a read for anyone interested in this kind of thing, though I prefer straight-out plagues to famines.

3.5*<br /><br />So many factors contributed to the Irish potato famine in the 1840s. Weather, geography, government, religion, and the class system all played a role in making a terrible situation worse. In <i>The Graves Are Walking</i>, we get a brief overview of Irish history before the 1840s and how the landed gentry played a role in exacerbating a horrible situation.<br /><br />This is the first book I’ve read on the Irish potato famine, so I have nothing to compare it to. Because I know little of Irish history, I learned a lot, and its made me excited to learn more about Ireland and her people. The weak sentence structure and inconsistent time line detracted from my otherwise enjoyment of the book, hence the 3.5 stars.

This is an informative and comprehensive book on the potato famine which wiped out a third of the Irish population from 1845 to 1849. Drawing both from facts and anecdotes, it illustrates the social, economic and political situation of Ireland in the middle of 1800s when the potato blight hit the country. It chronicles, in exhaustive detail, its swift spread trough the countryside and vividly describes the snowballing consequences of deadly famine, life-threatening diseases (typhus, dysentery and fevers) and mass emigration. <br /><br />It’s a hard book to read. While I loved the start, as the book progressed, it really dragged for me. The scale of the tragedy is overwhelming; there is so much information on human misery and suffering that the reader can absorb.<br /><br />I felt that the author piled historical data and figures on top of each other without structuring his arguments with clarity, the author seeming to randomly point the finger to either side of the Irish sea for causes of the human catastrophe. At times he blames the Celtic peasant roots, the backward economic model, the poor infrastructure, the Anglo-Irish land owners’ management of their land or Nationalist rebellious factions for the catastrophic situation, and then, a couple of sentences later, puts the responsibility squarely on the impotence of the British government, the “education” program of the Moralist politicians, the greed of the food merchants, the racist propaganda of the press or insensitive political economists. <br /><br />The timeline of the middle chapters was also inconsistent (jumping around often), contributing to my confusion. The ending of the was also quite abrupt, book concludes with 1947, the afterward briefly mentioning the years 1848 and 1849, but in fact the potato blight did not end then, it reappeared in 1848, so it would seem that the author simply ran out of time.<br /><br />After such comprehensive analysis of the economic and human disaster caused by the blight, I would have liked more information how Ireland successfully overcome the ordeal. Unfortunately, the author limit himself to only the following scanty statements in the afterword section:<br /><i><br />““During the 1850s, Irish farms grew steadily larger and Irish agricultural profits steadily bigger<br />...<br />In the mid-1860s, peasant agitation for land reform revived. The agitation led to the Land War in the 1870s and 1880s, and the Land War produced a series of reforms that reversed the land seizures of the plantation era. On the eve of World War I, 11.1 million of Ireland’s 20 million acres were again owned by Irish proprietors, and, as before the famine, many of the proprietors were small farmers.”</i><br /><br />Overall this was eye opener book for me and a great source of information. Although it it proved not as good as I hoped it would be, I don't regret reading it. 3.5 stars<br /><br />Fav. Quotes:<br /><i><br />The plan presupposed conditions that existed only in a nation with a modern economy and a modern infrastructure, and, except for the regions around Belfast and Dublin, Ireland was one of the most backward countries in Europe. Unlike Britain and France, she had no significant class of rural shopkeepers to distribute food in the interior; and the relief committee system was an imperfect substitute, particularly in remote regions of the west and midlands, where local gentry was lacking to organize a committee and the nearest source of commercial food might be twenty or thirty miles away. The Irish economy was also too small to efficiently regulate food prices through market competition, as the British economy did; and the deficiency of domestic mills meant that, in a time of acute food shortages, relief provisions had to be ground in England or sent 1,300 miles away, to the mills at the big British naval base in Malta.<br /><br />British relief policy was never deliberately genocidal, but its effects often were.<br /><br />The Times and The Economist stopped lecturing the Irish on sloth, violence, ignorance, superstition, personal hygiene, and dependence on government; there were fewer comparisons with the Eskimos and South Sea Islanders; the adjective “aboriginal” was used less frequently to modify the noun “Irish,” as in the construction “aboriginal Irish”<br /></i>