By CONCHUR O MUIRTHILE

The cataclysm that was An Gorta Mór remains an important part of our national and local story, a shadow that haunts towns and townlands the length and breadth of Ireland, condemning a million to exile and another million to the cold soil.

Yet acts of remembrance are more often than not associated with significant anniversaries or organised by municipal authorities. Skibbereen Arts Festival is now under way and it could be argued that one of the most remarkable events in its stellar programme will also be among its simplest.

A decade ago, Fiona Lusty, a half-Scottish native of Worcestershire, understandably fell in love with West Cork and settled in Ballydehob. While there she discovered a love for Gaeilge and joined a conversation group. When Fiona moved to Union Hall after the pandemic, all she found missing was an Irish language conversation group and so it remained until a chance encounter with retired school teacher Teresa Shanahan.

Teresa had never lost her love for the language and spotting a kindred spirit in Fiona, and was delighted to meet weekly for a chat over coffee as Gaeilge. Betty Carey and Carmel McKenna soon joined the group and as word began to trickle out about the weekly meet-ups, the numbers grew. Within a year, the group had outgrown Nolan’s and were relieved when Paul Finucane placed Cnoc Buí Arts Centre at their disposal.

Meeting each Thursday, the Gaeilgeoirí Bhréan Trá do far more than chat and drink coffee and in 2025 the group visited Reen Farm where they held a commemoration for the victims of An Gorta Mór. Their choice of location was no accident. Reen Farm was once the site of a pre-famine settlement and an account of the disaster that unfolded there remains among the most vivid in the canon of Irish famine witness statements.

Its owners John and Christine Kelly, initially unaware of its turbulent history, have become active curators of local famine memory, driven by a desire to record and where possible restore memories of the disaster that unfolded. Several limestone slabs serve to record accounts of distress from the locality, others carry the names of some of those who suffered, affording them a dignity in death denied in life.

The account in question was penned by NM Cummins, a J P is now preserved in limestone at Reen Farm. His letter was addressed to the Irish-born general and politician, the Duke of Wellington. Cummins appeals to his honour, his Irish sensibilities, pleading with him to intervene with Queen Victoria on behalf of her subjects.

He proceeds to describe with unflinching detail the horrors he had witnessed, including ‘famished and ghastly skeletons’ fever ridden and clinging to life, a mother burying her dead daughter under a few stones, and his being surrounded by 200 ‘phantoms’, all delirious with hunger or fever and clamouring for help.

Limestone slabs each carrying names or famine texts at Reen Farm.

The letter was carried in a number of papers but its appearance in The Times on Christmas Eve 1846 is credited with instigating a response from the young monarch, the government in Westminster and British public aimed at relieving the suffering.  Whatever relief arrived was to prove only temporary. Six months later, in June 1847 a letter from Mr Attridge of Castletownshend, initially carried in the Southern Reporter described the following;

‘I have now to mention the lamentable fact that out of 62 houses and 320 inhabitants on the farm of South Reen two years since (ago), there now remain after the ravages of disease and poverty but 8 hovels and about 50 people. The houses were pulled down for firing and the people carried off by fever. At this moment, I have no doubt but dead bodies are putrifying beneath the remains of the deserted huts.’

South Reen never recovered from the cataclysm visited upon its inhabitants but never drifted entirely from public memory, in part because of Cummins’ letter, in part because of folk memory. That memory is now being fortified for new generations through the actions of and collaboration between Gaeilgeoirí Bhréan Trá and the Kellys of Reen Farm.

Whether you are a descendant of a survivor of An Gorta Mór or your family have survived such a trauma elsewhere in the world, Gaeilgeoirí Bhréan Trá warmly invite you to join them on the morning of July 30th to participate in this year’s remembrance event, remembering not because it is a significant anniversary but because South Reen’s loss continues to be our loss and 180 years after Cummins’ desperate appeal, its people’s fate still matters and resonates in our world today.

Those interested are invited to gather on The League, South Reen (P81 KW53) at 10.45am on July 30th remembering to wear footwear appropriate for uneven, uphill terrain and dress to match the weather. The event will be bilingual.

A 40-minute walk to the Kelly farm will be interspersed with details from famine history and on arrival a ceremony of remembrance will take place in the Thinka-Thanka Garden, involving a recitation of Cummins’ letter, poetry, moments of reflection, prayer and a performance of a keening verse by Michelle Ní Choileáin, finishing with a song of hope. There is a strong possibility that this event will be held elsewhere in West Cork next year so this might be your best opportunity to attend this most meaningful of events.

For further details visit www.skibbereenartsfestival.com