The cause of the famine can be traced to years back, it was revolving around agriculture and land problems in Ireland as part of United Kingdom's territory.
At that time, a very large portion of the land in Ireland was owned by minorities and by absentee landlords, land owners who didn't live in their property and only visited it once or twice in their lifetime. The landlords had their own agents, the middleman, who collected the rent from the tenants, poor people who made up the majority of the population in the island. Those foreign minorities and absentee landlords mostly spent their wealth elsewhere, especially in England, thus impoverished local industries and economy.
The land owned by the landlords can be very very vast. Hundreds of square kilometers of land can be owned by one single absentee landlord. The land was then subdivided into small portions to be rented by the tenants. The tenants rarely received working wage, they had to work for their landlord to rent a patch of land needed to grow food for their family.
The British had a very high appetite for beef and milk, it changed a lot of rich soil of Ireland for the production since their colonisation of the land. The poverty stricken people forced to farm in smaller and poorer soil, where they grow potatoes, which gives more yield in bad soil than any other crops.
Once the people of Ireland were dependent on the potatoes, came the potato blight. A disease caused by Phytophthora infestans that destructed the majority of the potato crops in Ireland for years.
Then the Great Hunger happened.
The famine shocked the political situation in the United Kingdom, put the prime minister to a resignation, only to be replaced with a regime who believed deeply in laissez-faire. Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of the administration of government relief, limited the Government's food aid programme because of his firm belief in laissez-faire. He said:
"The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson"
Even during the worst year of the famine, there were almost four thousand vessels carried food to be exported to England from Ireland.
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Written by Pete St. John, the song has been played by various artists in various style. I love best the punk-rock version played by Dropkick Murphys.
Auscultare!
By a lonely prison wall,
I heard a young girl calling
Michael, they have taken you away,
For you stole Trevelyan's corn,
So the young might see the morn.
Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay.
Low lie the fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small free birds fly
Our love was on the wing, we had dreams and songs to sing
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry.
By a lonely prison wall,
I heard a young man calling
Nothing matters, Mary, when you're free
Against the famine and the Crown,
I rebelled, they cut me down.
Now you must raise our child with dignity.
Low lie the fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small free birds fly
Our love was on the wing, we had dreams and songs to sing
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry.
By a lonely harbor wall,
she watched the last star falling
As that prison ship sailed out against the sky
Sure she'll wait and hope and pray,
for her love in Botany Bay
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry.
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry.
Low lie the fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small free birds fly
Our love was on the wing, we had dreams and songs to sing
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry
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