“In Search of Ireland”, by H. V. Morton, published 1930, has this description of the emigration from Cobh, quoting earlier writers from almost a century before, which would have been when a lot of our ancestors were coming here. “A few miles from Cork is the saddest spot in Ireland – the port of Queenstown, known now as Cobh, which is pronounced as Cove. When I was there no Atlantic liner waited in deep water for the tenders to come out with the girls and boys who are leaving their country. But that is the characteristic sight of Queenstown. This place has heard, and will hear again, the keening of mothers lamenting as if for the dead. They say that in the last twenty-five years over three-quarters of a million young Irish men and women have gone away from this port. Queenstown is a wound which Ireland cannot staunch; and from it pours a constant stream of her best and youngest blood. I imagine from the accounts I have heard that the departure of an emigrant ship from Queenstown has not altered much since Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall described it in their weighty work ‘Ireland’ nearly a century ago: ‘We stood in the month of June on the quay at Cork to see some emigrants embark in one of the steamers for Falmouth, on the way to Australia. The band of exiles amounted to two hundred, and an immense crowd had gathered to bid them a long and last adieu. The scene was touching to a degree; it was impossible to witness it without heart-pain and tears. Mothers hung upon the necks of their athletic sons; young girls clung to elder sisters; fathers – old white-headed men – fell on their knees, with arms uplifted to heaven, imploring the protecting care of the Almighty on their departing children; “Och,” exclaimed one aged woman, “all’s gone from me in the wide world when you’re gone! Sure you wor all I had left! – of seven sons – but you! Oh, Dennis, Dennis, never forget your mother – your mother – don’t, avourneen – your poor old mother, Dennis!” And Dennis, a young man, though the sun was shining on his grey hair, supported “his mother” in his arms until she fainted, and then he lifted her into a small car that had conveyed his baggage to the vessel, and kissing a weeping young woman who had leaned against the horse, he said: “I’ll send home for you both, Peggy, in the rise of next year; and ye’ll be child to her from this out, till then, and THEN, avourneen, you’ll be my own.” When we looked again the young man was gone, and Peggy had wound her arms round the old woman, while another girl held a broken cup of water to her lips. ‘Amid the din, the noise, the turmoil, the people pressing and rolling in vast masses towards the place of embarkation like the waves of the troubled sea, there were many such sad episodes. Men, old men too, embracing each other and crying like children. Several passed bearing most carefully little relics of their homes – the branch of a favourite hawthorn tree, whose sweet blossoms and green leaves were already withered, or a bunch of meadowsweet. ‘It is impossible to describe the final parting. Shrieks and prayers, blessings and lamentations mingled in one great cry from those on the quay, and those on shipboard, until a band stationed on the forecastle struck up “St Patrick’s Day”. “Bate the brains out of the big drum, or ye’ll not stifle the women’s cries,” said one of the sailors to the drummer….” http://greetings.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Greetings - Send your Valentines love online.