The Love Of Home

My Great-great-grandfather was born in 1855, just as Ireland was trying to recover from a potato famine that, through death and emigration, had taken approximately a quarter of the population. About a million people in Ireland are estimated to have died of starvation and disease between 1846 and 1851, and around two million emigrated in the years between 1845 and 1855.That particular famine was proportionally much more destructive of human life than the vast majority of famines in modern times.

Today, at 34.5 million, the Irish-American population is 7 times larger than Ireland. This gives a hint at the numbers that have left Ireland over the centuries.

John Coleman was born into an Ireland that was suffering loss. He writes about those leaving Ireland to find their fortune in America, and tells of the heart-break of those left behind.

The Love of Home

This little isle in the western sea,

Is the land we love the best;

No other land o’er all the earth,

In such verdant beauty dressed.

We may travel far o’er distant lands,

We may fame and fortune find;

But we never forget the dear old home,

Or the land we left behind.

Away from the land they love so well,

Her children are forced to roam;

‘Mong strangers on foreign soil to dwell,

Far away from the dear old home.

But though far away those exiles may stray,

Though fortune may on them smile;

Still they never forget the dear old spot

Away in the Emerald Isle.

And when far o’er the ocean, with final devotion,

They think of the old folk at home;

Where they first saw the light, and oh! The delight

When the letter comes over the foam.

For father did write, maybe mother indite it.

Its pages are stained with their tears;

As in their own simple way they explain their dismay,

The battle they fought through the years.

We are lonely and poor, we did hardships endure,

Since you left us we have held the old home;

But their pleadings give place to the pride of the race,

And they something conceal from their own.

That they hug to their breasts, won’t let it go west,

For fear ‘twould their children annoy;

Awake or asleep they will that secret keep

It would rob them of half of their joy,

And in unison there they offer a prayer

Before they retire to rest;

With such fervour they pray for their loved ones away

In that land now their home in the west.

And they there lie and ponder, for absence makes fonder,

And visions arise in their brain;

Of those children gone west, that they clasped to their breasts,

Will ever they see them again?

Still preserved are the toys of their girls and boys,

And when gazed on their eyes fill with tears;

Those children now stray in a land far away,

And gone are those past happy years.

But a letter arrives, shows their love still survives,

‘Mong strangers, that love did not wane;

And there’s something inside that will help them tide

Through the winter, ‘tis Christmas again.

And so thankful they feel, on the hearth stone they kneel

To their Father in Heaven they pray;

To those children reward, and from danger them guard,

In that land in the west far away.