Curious, Secretive, Sacred Irish Independence Political Icons (?)

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 821  Blog Bookstore

"Malone. … My father died of starvation in Ireland in the black ’47. Maybe you heard of it?
Violet. The Famine!
Malone (with smouldering passion) No, the Starvation. When a country is full of food, and exporting it, there can be no famine. Me father was starved dead; and I was starved out to America in me mother’s arms. English rule drove me and mine out of Ireland . …" --George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903)

 

 

"The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight but the English created the famine...a million and half men, women and children were carefully, prudently and peacefully slain by the English government. They died of hunger in the midst of abundance which their own hands created."--John Mitchel (1815-1875), Irish Nationalist (and listed as a "martyr" in one of these badges/stamps)

I'm sorry to say that I do not know the origin of these diminutive, powerful emblems, and that what follows is all guess-work. They are only about a half-inch square or so, but they hold very powerful meanings in their messages.  I imagine that they were political messages to be worn, or posted in the mail, or used in subversive ways--because their messages were enormously subversive, taking on the occupying power of Great Britain at a time of supreme and enforced deprivation, an occupied people fighting against a spectacularly-better equipped foe.  The messages related to the Great Famine of 1847-1849, when the potato crops failed for three consecutive seasons , initiating a chain of events that caused the deaths of perhaps two million people, or 20% of the entire population of Ireland.  People didn't starve so much as they did die of associative diseases related to the process of starving to death, al of which it seems could have been addressed by some sort of effort by the British government.  It does seem to me as though the people of Ireland were left to flounder and drown.  The stories of the extreme deprivation are horrible:  starving dogs digging up the bodies of the recently unguarded dead, rats attacking the dying for food, and so on.  Terrible, miserable stories coming from what is probably the worst of period of starvation in European history.  the scene has been duplicated numerous times in this century killing hundreds of millions of people:: in Soviet Stalin's filthy anti-human pogroms, under the equally filthy Maoist adventures in production and nationalist strength in China, in Biafra, in Darfur, and on and on in our frailly stupid political existence here on Earth.

The small badges have always seemed somewhat sacred to me; there's just such a feeling of hope and inspiration and overwhelming empathy in them.  

 

 

Comments

[Jeff]

I keep coming back to these. I like them. Irish Retablos, in a way. When were they used? How were they used? Do you know more about them?

[John Ptak]

Jeff: I know nothing about them. Nada. I can't really imagine what they were used for, they're so small...its not like they'd be used on envelopes (which at this time were not common...and by envelopes I mostly mean the self-folding stationery kind). I just don't know.

[John Ptak]

Oh--I take it that these are contemporary to the Starvation, all around 1850.