Happy St. Patrick's Day!
History is often the same movie with a different cast. Watching and reading news reports over the weekend about ‘Rising Migrant Apprehensions’ at Texas’ border with Mexico is a variation on a theme that has been the American tune from before the beginning of our nation. I am a verse of that song.
The Irish's arrival in America was, for its time, the largest and most prolonged migration of one ethnic group since the nations of the world began keeping track of such things. Those fleeing Ireland for America were not only family members, but extended families, whole neighborhoods, and, in many instances, entire villages and townships. All were half a step ahead of starvation and destitution.
To remain in Ireland was to die but fleeing to America was often death of another kind, only more slowly. Having already been made into outcasts in our own country, immigrants hardly noticed how our treatment in the New World often resembled our handling in the old.
And still, we came, by the thousands every month, by the tens of thousands and into the millions. At one point, very nearly twenty percent of all Americans were of Irish ancestry which is a statistic offered today, Saint Patrick's Day, to help not just those of us who are and were part of the Irish Diaspora to remember where we came from but to remind all of us how far we have yet to go.
"Fare thee well to the groves of the shillelagh and shamrock;
Farewell to the girls of this country around.
May their hearts be as merry as ever I would wish them
When far, across this ocean I’m bound.
"But what matter to me where my bones they are buried,
If in peace and contentment I spend the rest of my life.
Oh the green fields of Canada, are daily blooming,
And it's there I'll put an end to my misery and strife.
"But my father is old and my mother quite feeble,
To leave their dear country, it would grieve their heart sore.
Whilst the tears down their cheeks, in big drops are rolling,
To think they should die on a far distant shore.
"So pack up your seashores, consider it no longer,
Ten dollars a week is not very bad pay.
With no taxes or tithes to devour up your wages,
All in the green fields of America.
"Now the sheep run unsheared, and the land's gone to rushes,
The journeyman’s gone, and the mender of reels.
So it’s cross the Atlantic, you journeymen and tailors
And your fiddlers who flaked out the old mountain reels.
"I remember the time when old Ireland was flourishing,
And most of the tradesmen, they worked for fine pay.
But since the manufactories have crossed the Atlantic,
It’s then we must go on to Americay.
“And now to conclude and to finish my ditty
If e'er a friendless Irishman in chance to meet
With the best in the house I will treat them and greet them,
Home from the
green fields of America."
-bill kenny
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