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Fields of Athenry

My version of a song re-done with better light and sound for my sweet friend Suzannah Jo. Telling a very common story of a young man in Ireland during the famine, being transported to Botany Bay in Australia for the crime of stealing food to keep his children from starving to death. The church didn't consider stealing food to survive a sin, but it was a crime under British law... and the British took advantage of the famine as a means of de-populating the land, to get rid of "the Irish problem". "The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the (irish) people." ~Charles E. Trevelyan In an 1848 article in the Edinburgh Review - at the height of the famine - Trevalyan applauded the fact that starvation encouraged migration and supported the view that God was punishing the Irish Catholics for their superstitious ways and adherence to 'popery'. Trevalyan and many British officials saw the famine as "the hand of God" striking the Irish for their refusal to give up the Pope... and if God deems it right to strike the Irish, then who were they in their minds to go against the will of God? The policy enacted by the government at the time is impossible to defend. A policy of effectively withholding relief and allowing market forces to take their course was brutal. I find it amazing that people could allow others to starve, while exporting food from that country for their own markets in order to keep their food prices low. And calling on God Himself to justify it, showing the height of their pompous condescending bigotry.