Naked Protest at Derrycassin

A naked protest was a Gaelic tradition to shame the protested into doing the right thing. Clothes among the poor were scant in those days anyway, and it makes us coil in horror at the destitution in a land of plenty...
A naked protest was a Gaelic tradition to shame the protested into doing the right thing. Clothes among the poor were scant in those days anyway, and it makes us coil in horror at the destitution in a land of plenty…

April 20th 1847

Men, children and women with clothes cast away
Came to Derrycassin door
To protest and plunder for want of food
For work was finished, and they were poor.
As sooner die of gunshot they said
As hunger, they had nothing left
No home, no food, no future: all
Many of family to hunger bereft.

The JP to granard set about
Only work this Saturday could he get
They went contented as can be expected
Their subsequent fate we know not yet
Did they then by the roadside die
Or did they shomehow manage help somewhere find
A distand cousin found them at his door
I say a prayer for those alive today of their kind.

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