Áine Ryan
A BUSY programme of events has been planned to mark the upcoming National Famine Commemoration, to be held in Murrisk on Sunday, May 16 next.
In the week before the commemoration, the general theme of famine will be marked by a series of lectures, performances, talks and walks.
On the night before the commemoration ceremony, leading activist and founder of charity organisation GOAL, Mr John O’Shea, will speak, in Holy Trinity Church, on Saturday 15, on the subject of contemporary world hunger.
Meanwhile, author and songwriter, Mr Brendan Graham, accompanied by musicians, is scheduled to start off the programme on Monday, May 10, by addressing the subject of ‘The Famine in Fiction and Song’ in Holy Trinity Church.
On the following evening, at Hotel Westport, well-known and acclaimed archaeologist, Michael Gibbons, will speak on The Legacy of Famine on the Landscape.
Curator of the Clew Bay Heritage Centre, Ms Bronach Joyce will lead two historical walking tours, highlighting aspects of famine in Westport town and the Clew Bay.
A session of traditional music will be held at Teach na Miasa and Murrisk Community Centre, both at the foot of Croagh Patrick and in the shadow of John Behan’s evocative famine sculpture.
Furthermore, art historian, Catherine Marshall will deliver a talk at the Custom House Studios on Visual Representations of the Great Famine, with a talk also in the National Museum of Country Life, by Professor Peter Grey, on Religion and the Great Famine.
Details will be published in next week’s Mayo News about the memorial day itself.
This famine memorial’s symbolism is intensified by its adjacency to holy mountain Croagh Patrick and nearby Clew Bay, through which many of our doomed and starving forebears sailed during the 1840s.
The inaugural National Famine Commemoration, under the aegis of the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs,was held in Skibereen, West Cork last year. A local organising committee for the event meets weekly at Westport Civic Offices on Altamont Street.
