Famines and Saints

In case you can’t make out the detail, and don’t think you are really seeing what you are seeing, zoom in. You are.

This memorial, to the Potato Famine is between “the Greenway,” itself loosely named as that might conjure up a more idyllic bicycle and pedestrian pathway rather than the treacherous motorcar raceway it actually is, at least between Westport and Croagh Patrick, the pyramid-shaped mountain rising above the seaside village of Murrisk, County Mayo. 

Croagh Patrick is named in honor of a local hero, St. Patrick. Rumor has it that he fasted up there for forty days, deepening his relationship with God and figuring out how to convert the Irish to Christianity, a mission driving him to the extreme. Dubious as the motives and character of this character who many a yarn has been spun about may be, Patrick, who lived around 400 AD, enjoys worldwide popularity to this day. 

You’ve doubtless heard of him. To many, his name is synonymous with Guinness beer, parades and wild Saint Patrick day festivities. He’s got his own national holiday in Ireland. And international landmarks as widespread as the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, and the London Eye all light up in green in honor of the holiday.

He is wildly popular in Ireland, credited with imposing Christianity on the happy pagans by usurping their holidays and giving them a Christian or the “world according to Patrick” twist. He saved a failing religion, Catholicism that is, when after spending six years in Ireland, (having been kidnapped by Irish pirates from his home in Britain and sold into slavery here) and getting to know the fine people, he escaped and shortly thereafter saw the light. That is, he realized how he could oppress and slaughter the powerful women who maintained the healthy connections within our biosphere and manipulate the Irish by creating an overlay to their customs and rituals, slowly seducing them to come under the governance of the church. He was a cunning diplomat with government officials too, and successfully created a symbiotic system between church and state that worked for everyone in power. Karl Marx famously called religion the opiate of the masses, but the same can be said for any form of government insofar as it too seeks to codify social norms deemed essential to running a society. So between everybody there is a lot of opium going around and there are a lot of people who want it. Be honest: chanting, rosary beads, meditating, deep breathing, it calms us down. Accordingly, we seek it. So you see, I’m not passing judgment here even if it sounds like it. And although I reject much of the dogma, and abhor the torture and death executed in its name, another name for power and power alone, I feel a certain kinship toward Catholicism. I’ve studied it. I’ve wept under the Stations of the Cross. Seriously wept. I personally witnessed three magnificent angels in the old San Elizario Mission in El Paso on a dark and creepy Good Friday night and will never ever forget it. And I once loved a priest. I think these credentials, along with FOMO, qualify me to yearn to do the pilgrimage recommended on the sign at the base of Croagh Patrick, rosary beads sliding smoothly over my fingers, sedating my anxiety. 

If I don’t fulfill the pilgrimage, I feel like I just won’t get the whole experience. I won’t feel the sacredness of the mountain. The unmade decision is making me nervous. Bordering on peevish. I shuffle around at the bottom of the trail. I want to do it, but I don’t. The wind is biting, and dark clouds bespeak a downpour looming. But that could all change in a moment. The deciding factor is my feet. They are raw with blisters. I can’t fix that on my way up. 

Here are the pilgrimage rules. There are three stations. The first is at the base of the cone of Leacht Benain. The second is on the summit. The third is Reilig Mhuire, some distance down the Lecanvey. I’m throwing in the Irish names to impress you.

When you do a pilgrimage you get to be a pilgrim. It’s automatic. As I understand it, pilgrims simply walk around and see with new eyes. Being a pilgrim sounds kind of nice. I want to be a wide-eyed, reverant, soft spoken pilgrim.

At the first station, the pilgrim walks around the mountain seven times, reverantly chanting seven Our Fathers, seven Hail Marys and saying the Apostles’ Creed once each time around.

Our Father, Hail Mary and the Apostles’ Creed  refer to favorite prayers of Catholics. These chants are designed to open the senses to contemplating the Divine, kickstarting the brain into successive holy insights.

Did you get that? Seven Our Fathers, seven Hail Marys and one Apostles’ Creed seven times each round, for seven rounds.

You’ve warmed up now. You’re ready to tackle the second station. It’s a little more involved. 

Having reached the summit of this increasingly rocky mountain, and mind you, some pilgrims have actually picked their way across the sharp stones barefoot, the pilgrim first kneels and says seven Our Fathers, seven Hail Marys and the Apostle Creed once. 

Then he/she/it kneels at the alter in front of the gleaming white chapel built up there and prays for the Pope’s intentions. The Pope asks that you help him effectuate his intentions by also praying for them. Each month, the Pope publishes new intentions. A current example is the August 2025 intention: to focus on promoting mutual coexistence, and especially to avoid conflicts related to ethnic, political, religious, or ideological differences. In other words, zip it up and smile at everyone.

After this, the pilgrim walks fifteen times around the circular mound on the top, praying the whole time. At the end of fifteen rounds, said pilgrim enters the chapel, Leaba  Phadraig. Once inside, the pilgrim again drops to his/her/its knees and recites seven Our Fathers, seven Hail Marys and one Creed. I use the term “recite” loosely. It is more than a recitation. The pilgrim pours his/her/its soul into these prayers. Then the pilgrim solemnly exits and walks seven times around the chapel, to seal it all in.

The third station, halfway back down the hill, Rolling Muir is made up of circles, circles of stone that you walk around. The pilgrim walks seven times around each circle of stones, repeating seven Our Fathers, seven Hail Marys and one Creed. 

And then, for the finale, the pilgrim walks around the entire enclosure of Rheilig Muir seven more times, praying the whole time of course.  

I might have got this a bit mixed up, but the sign will tell you what to do, so just snap a photo of it on your way up.

Although I badly wanted to, I guess it wasn’t bad enough because I didn’t do it. 

A t-shirt in a tourist gift shop window spoke to me on this score. It was on a mannequin next to the ones that bragged, “I climbed Croagh Patrick” and said instead, “I nearly climbed Croagh Patrick.”  I did hike some of it, enough to catch the splendid views of the many islands in the blue blue bay. 

Enough to enjoy the sacred rocks, the dark green moss, the sparkly brook racing downhill between the soft emerald tufts of grass and even the super cool black slug.

I came to understand from a woman on the bus from Killarney to Dingle that the pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick is actually part of a far longer one. She pointed to a trail winding around a mountain in County Kerry and I think that perhaps this shrine along the path at Slea Head is a stop.

The potato famine memorial is across street from the base to Croagh Patrick in County Mayo outside of Westport. I found it after I came back down and was simply meandering around searching for more wild beauty. A definite buzzkill.

The plaque on the walk out to the ship of skeletons reads “National Famine Memorial,” which got me to thinking. Was this the National Famine Memorial? I recalled another, on Custom House Quays in Dublin. It was striking: a malnourished family heading toward the emigration docks. 

Close-up of man in back right

It is a story of horror still unfolding. Were they heading toward one of the many coffin ships, so named for the deaths so many onboard would meet? Or would they die of the diseases the impoverished immigrants suffered in the tenements of Chicago or New York?

And what about the plaque in the graveyard I visited this morning on my way out of Donegal? The graveyard simply called Famine Graveyard. What was its status? Maybe there are so many, just like the unmarked graves there (and everywhere else) why bother with a hierarchy of memorials?

And as I write this I wonder too about the tomb and cillîn in front of the mass graveyard along my stroll back to Westport. I found it a bit disconcerting on a lovely walk to pass lush hillocks, which turn out to actually be mounds of corpses, but the Irish must be used to it because since then I have been seeing them everywhere. A cillîn is a burial site for those not allowed to be buried in consecrated churchyard. These include outliers like the mentally disabled, suicides, beggars, unmarried mothers, executed criminals, and shipwreck victims, fates your mother thankfully had no idea would befall you when you were her dear babe in arms. The cillin it is considered “the eternal womb for our still born and unbaptised children, many of them buried in living memory.” (I stole that poetic phrase in quotations because it’s beautiful but I don’t know who to credit it to.) Just think about it a minute. Our unborn children buried in living memory. So sad. We each have people we’ve loved buried in living memory, don’t we? 

But the stillborn, the miscarriages, the tiny babies, the young children with all of their love and potential…they will always hold a special place in the pain we carry.

The Titanic Museum in Belfast and the Emigration Museum in Dublin both had exhibits recounting the history of the starving trying to leave. Not to confuse matters here as the Titanic sunk in 1912: The Potato Famine lasted from 1845-1852. The consequences unfolded over many more years. In fact… well, let’s just say that it’s left an indelible mark here. And have a pint.

The workhouses were created under the Irish Poor Law Act of 1838, modeled on the English system and were designed to be intentionally worse than the worst homeless condition one could experience, so as not to attract loafers. So they were miserable places, filthy hotbeds for disease where people were worked to the bone under harrowing conditions and most died. So many that newsrags of the time had illustrations of corpses draped over wheelbarrows in front of the workhouses to be transported to deep holes where they were tossed on top of each other: men, women and children. The famine brought more starving and destitute to their doors so that they were vastly overcrowded and became incubators for typhus, cholera, and dysentary. Fever sheds were slapped together to try and isolate those with contagious diseases so the workhouses could keep running, but of course they were also places of sheer misery. Quakers from America tried to help, setting up “famine pots” to divvy out at least spoonfuls of gruel to the starving, but the English put an end to their help. And the Choctaw Indians from the US. When they saw the starving people alight on the shores of North America, they recognized their plight as many of their own had tied on the Trail of Tears, and they sent maize. My hostel keeper at the Forum church in Montmellick, Colette Conroy Dunne told me that a local Quaker built a mill to grind it as the Irish here were not familiar with maize. Stories of ruthlessness abound. Ninety-five percent of the land was owned by the English who had usurped it from the Irish and now they demanded rent from them. Rent that could not pay. And so they were evicted, forcing the ones strong enough to, to emigrate. To leave the home they dearly loved. Food that was produced in Ireland was shipped to England. The tales go from bad to worse until your blood is nearly boiling with the egregiousness of it all. But remember the Pope’s intentions.

The potato famine in Ireland was from 1845-52. A few facts I gathered at exhibits along my trip give a snapshot of the movement of the Irish who survived. Ireland had 11 million people at the start of the famine. 4.2 million people starved to death. Between 1845-55, 1.8 million arrived in the US. I’m not sure how many were offloaded to Australia and the US and other places on “prison ships” or “coffin ships” for stealing food to feed their starving families, but there are some pretty sad songs still sung in the pubs about it. 1851 and 1901 Belfast’s population increased from 87,062 to 349,180. Employment conditions there also reeked of Oliver Twist cruelties. I refer you to the quote of the monster supervising the copper mines in Bunmahon.

I’d visited the Famine Graveyard down a narrow chart alley between my lodging at a bed and breakfast and the city center of Donegal. It was just a grassy area of mass unmarked graves. Evidently there were too many corpses and they had to be buried as quickly as possible. Same song all over the island.

This is a famine pot.

This old cemetery was also on my walk back along the Greenway to Westport and I don’t know why I felt compelled to cross the road and enter it. I was more than uncomfortable. I don’t like to walk around graves because I feel like dispossessed spirits will cling to me and keep me up at night with incessant threats. I think it came from childhood scares, primarily the chant of the children on the school bus every morning as we passed an old cemetery. Someone would say in a deep, shaky ominous voice: Who took my liver?  And then another would echo the refrain until the whole bus was echoing with deep shaky voices asking, “Who took my liver?”

Why are children so mean? Mind you, I did grow up in a pocket of coal mining and steel mills and I can’t think of anyone I met who was not judgmental. No wonder I’d love to live in Ireland among the kind and merry.

I didn’t venture too far in to the graveyard. Even squinting, I couldn’t make out most of the worn inscriptions subjected to the fierce wind and rains here. But the very first grave I could read bore the name of a woman in my ancestral lineage. My mother would have researched this further and probably come up with some DNA connection, but I feel that information is just one piece of a more complex puzzle. Besides, it was a common name in Ireland I’m sure.

A common name, but one on a photo collage my mother made me of the other women named Elizabeth (my middle name) in our ancestry. It included Mary Berry, mother of Michael Berry.  Weirdly, this is the same name as my first husband. I was young. My family didn’t even know him. We eloped, a practice I was to learn shortly thereafter from my maternal grandmother was actually a tradition among us Elizabeths. 

Makes you wonder. How much autonomy is there in even your most rebellious actions?

If you ever believe your life has been boring, I assure you that if you examine it as a succession of moments, and examine just one of them closely, you will be slayed by the depth of the mystery surrounding who and what you are.  

As I was leaving the burial grounds, I placed my hand on one of the stone posts at the top of the steps for balance, and quickly lifted it when I felt something odd. Cold. It was a pile of coins. What? I asked ChatGPT. It told me that in pre-Christian and early Christian Ireland, it was common to leave tokens to pay the ferryman to row the deceased into the afterlife. The custom has survived. It’s considered lucky too to find a coin. I guess for that very reason. You might need it. That night I picked one up from the floor of the pub and set it on the counter. A woman next to me said quickly, “Make a wish.”

I wished that Mary Elizabeth Berry would make it over to the afterlife if she hadn’t yet.