The Emigrants' Farewell, by Henry Edward Doyle

The Emigrants' Farewell

Henry Edward Doyle (1827-1893)

c. 1868

Source: Mary Cusack, Preface

Cusack was greatly moved by the wrenching apart of Irish families under the pressure of famine and extreme poverty: "Of all the peoples on the face of the globe, the Irish Celts are the most attached to their families and to their lands. God only knows the broken hearts that go over the ocean strangers to a strange land. The young girls who leave their aged mothers, the noble, brave young fellows who leave their old fathers, act not from a selfish wish to better themselves, but from the hope, soon to be realized, that they may be able to earn in another land what they cannot earn in their own." [Commentary continues below.]

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Cusack writes, she says, from personal experience: "I saw a lad once parting from his aged father. I wish I had not seen it. I heard the agonized cries of the old man: "My God! he's gone! he's gone!" I wish I had not heard it. I heard the wild wailing cry with which the Celt mourns for his dead, and glanced impulsively to the window. It was not death, but departure that prompts that agony of grief" (Preface to the First Edition).

Henry Doyle has captured the intensity of emotion shared by old and young, men, women and children, at these terrible partings. Only the small girl, pointing perhaps at a rowing boat returning from taking passengers out to the vessel, may be unaware of the full tragedy of the moment. The father of the family has his hands raised as if in blessing. A cane and cap lie abandoned on the quayside, all that is left to them of the emigrant.

Links to related material

Bibliography

Cusack, Mary Frances. An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800. Illustrated by Henry Doyle. 1868. Project Gutenberg. Web. 28 January 2022.

Created 28 January 2022