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Irish Famine Poems I Surmise So far back I can only surmise, of the family who ate their subsistence meal in the parlour on Sundays. I surmise they were not the poorest. Their house – not a sod, scraw and thatch cabin on a roadside margin. I surmise secure tenure of land. They did not, at least not all, leave. I surmise they were people with self-value, respectability, tenacity. I know that they survived. They were my people on the distaff side. In a Fourth Class Dwelling Report by Robert E. Matheson, Registrar General for Ireland. 1841-1901 Housing of the People of Ireland Part 83. 4th Class – Houses built of mud or perishable materials. One room with one, or no window. 3rd Class – A better description of house. From one to four rooms and windows. 2nd Class – A good farmhouse of five to nine rooms and windows. 1st Class – All other houses of a better description than the preceding. 1841. 4 th class houses comprised 37% of the total. 1851. 4 th class houses comprised 13% of the total. The drop was due to ‘failure of the potato crop leading to famine, fever and pestilence’. With sod, scraw and thatch they made the shelter which enveloped them. The cabin rose from the ground around it. When nothing was left but a flicker of life, the family drew together inside, closing the door for decency. Rain, wind and time melted the walls. The roof lowered. The door rotted. The cabin sank to a hummock, to a wide ridge, disappeared from sight. As had the dead from hunger within, of whom all knowledge has gone. BIO:
I come from Co.Limerick, Ireland. I grew up on a farm there. I am a painter, weaver and have written and published poems in recent years.
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Great Changes “Deaths and marriages make great changes.” That’s what they used to say, In a general way, Not specific to the Famine. There were too many deaths then. They were too close. Dying was a failure. That wasn’t spoken of. It was lived out of. It cut a deeper line Of before and after Than Independence, the change From rulers to leaders. It removed or erased so many It changed Ireland. It changed land ownership From up and down to the middle. The strong farmers rose. Their cattle conquered crops. Marriages were made to unite fields. In a domestic commerce Resources were invested for The future in a son and A son a priest for good measure Was a measure of success. Women served purposes. Their speaking was sanctioned In self-betraying confessions To oppressive clergy. Their lives went to the farms Their love to the productive sons. Their marriages were fodder For literature. The absolution of lost knowledge Comes slowly on the land. Roots grow from our feet. My grand father struck a man Who, in drink, accused my forebears Of the theft of fields from his forebears, After the Hunger. In the Cromwellian phrase of West Limerick- My grandfather “falled” him. Who will know now in that place The story or the truth? These many years later We appear to be recovering From that disease of the blood- The fear of want. The roots growing from our feet Are shorter. We can love and leave the land. There are changes. Click on the file below to listen to Rena read her poem: 
 Rena Fleming grew up on a farm in Co.Limerick and now enjoys the landscape and the shores of Galway Bay.
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