Black 47

I remember the sound of the earth. Not the soft, rich soil beneath my feet, but the dry, crumbly stuff no longer yielding the promise of harvest. It wasn’t the sound of dirt that gave life anymore. It was the sound of a grave being dug.

The year was 1847, the worst of it. We had been waiting for the famine to pass for two long years, hoping the bad spell would eventually lift. But it never did. The blight had come for the potatoes, turning them to rot, and it wanted every last one of them.

My name is Aisling, and I’m a daughter of the land. My da, Brendan, was a farmer. He was a strong man, like an oak tree, but that was before the famine came for us. We lived in a small cottage in the countryside of Queenstown, with nothing but the hills and fields surrounding us and the river that cut through the valley. It was enough for our family before the famine came and took it. It took not only our crops but our very bones. And in time, it took my da.

I remember the first time we saw the blight, two years earlier, in 1845. I was in the field with my brothers, plucking weeds from the rows of potatoes, when we noticed the leaves had started to curl, the color leeching out of them. We didn't understand it at first, not fully. But we knew something was wrong. Maybe some bad luck. Only bad luck don’t last this long.

Da tried holding us together, but the weeks stretched into months, and the hunger got harder to ignore. We ate what we could scrape from the earth—nettles, dandelion roots, anything—but it didn’t fill the belly. It just left a hunger that gnawed at us, deep inside.

Then, in 1847, the fever came.

I remember the smell of it first—the stench of sweat, of bodies that had begun to waste away. It came on slow, like a wind, until it swept through the village, taking our friends and neighbors one by one. Da got it, and within days, he was bent and fevered. His hands, once strong as stone, trembled like grasses in the wind. And Ma? She couldn’t hide the fear in her eyes. I remember her voice, soft and worried, telling me that he would pull through, that he always had before.

But not this time. Not for Da.

He died in that fever-ridden summer, leaving us with only memories of the man he had been—big as anything, kind, the anchor of our family. Suddenly we had nothing to look to.

I remember my brothers, though their faces are a bit faded now. I can see sets of blue and green eyes dancing with merry, but the rest has melted into the ground. They were still boys when the famine claimed them, still playing and laughing despite the hunger. But soon, they stopped laughing. Soon, they stopped talking. Soon, the earth took them, too, and never gave us anything back.

We were just two now—Ma and me. The famine still stretched before us, endless. I used to dream of the days when we’d eat a full meal, when the sun would shine and the potatoes would grow fat again. But those days were gone. We just didn’t want to believe it.

The only thing that didn’t change was the sound of the birds. In the mornings, I could hear the robins and the larks singing in the trees, their songs bright against the grey skies. On rare days, when the sun would peek through the clouds, Ma would sit with me on the steps, humming a soft tune. But the hunger didn’t care for tunes. The hunger didn’t care for anything.

One day, near the end of that black 47 summer, we heard about the ship to America. The talk had circled the village for months, but the whispers were louder by 1847. They had to be. A ship, they said, was waiting in the port in Queenstown, taking people to the new world across the sea. There was a chance, a real one, to escape this hell.

But, like everything else, there was a price.

The ship wasn’t free, and it wasn’t kind. The journey across the ocean was long and perilous, and many who boarded never made it. We were starving just to make it to the docks, let alone survive a voyage like that. But what choice did we have?

Ma didn’t speak much that day. She stared across the land as though looking at the hills would tell her what to do. I thought it was foolish since they’d been so cruel to her. After a long time, she said, “We have to go, Aisling. It’s the only way.”

We packed what we could carry—nothing more than a few clothes and a sack of bread crumbs, and we left our home behind. We left our oak trees. We left the graves. The potatoes we had so carefully tended all my life had become nothing but rot, and there was no use staying where there was nothing left.

I remember the road to the port and the faces around us. They were gaunt, hollowed out by hunger and fear. We weren’t the only ones making the journey. There were dozens, maybe hundreds, like us—families with nothing left but the hope of escape.

We reached the docks, and the ship looked worse up close. It was an old thing, like some ghost from a dream, creaking in the wind. The captain was rough, his face weathered and hard. All he cared about was bodies—bodies to fill the hold and make the trip worth it. We gave that man all the money we had left.

The ship was crowded and sickly, the air thick with the scent of disease and dampness. It was a slow journey, as the captain feared the winds, and so we spent weeks in that hold, packed in tight and disgusting. And still, I remember the quiet moments when Ma would squeeze my hand and murmur softly, “We will make it. We will be alright.”

Can’t say I believed her. She’d said the same about Da.

We arrived in America, the city towering before us like some strange beast, its buildings stretching up to the heavens. It was like stepping into a dream, but even here, I knew things weren’t as they seemed. There was still hunger, though maybe nothing of the kind we left behind.

I remember the moment I stepped off the boat. The streets were full of promise, saying we’d have something new here without mention of things being better. But there was something else, too—a memory, a weight I carried with me even on this new earth.

It was the faces of the people we left behind, the ones who died in our homeland with nothing but the brown dirt to cradle them. They never much stood a chance.

Then there was Ma, standing beside me, her eyes tired but growing stronger now with hope. She squeezed my hand and whispered, “We’ve made it.”

But made it where? I knew the truth. The earth would always hold what we left behind. The famine would always be a part of us. And the birds, the ones who sang in the mornings, would follow us to this strange new land and remind us if ever we forgot.

When I hear their songs, I close my eyes and pretend they’re rising above the hills of Ireland. In those moments, I feel like we’re still there. Still home. Still waiting for our luck to come in and for the hunger to finally end.