Bring Your Own Hammer is a project in which historians and composers collaborate to create new and original song cycles based on historical sources.
Below, musician Carol Keogh introduces her contribution to the project, inspired by 'the emigration waves of the Great Famine' - watch the video for A Pair Of Packed Valises here.
I was invited to contribute to Bring Your Own Hammer in late 2021 by one of the key artists on the project, composer Mike Smalle, and by the project directors, historians, Richard Mc Mahon and Niall Whelehan. The idea of a collaboration between academics and musicians was meat and drink to me - I needed little persuasion.
At that point a few themes were being mooted, one of which was "The Sea", with a particular interest in arrivals and departures to and from Ireland in the 1800s. Having completed the writing of two darkly inspired albums as The Wicc, I wanted a subject that admitted a chink of light, but my mind went immediately to the emigration waves of the Great Famine.
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Like many people, I wonder if distant relatives made the journey in those years. No way to know for sure without genealogical research, but I went to the emigration records and searched for the name Keogh. Now there are many names that might be connected to me over generations of marital changes but for a voyage of fancy this seemed a good place to start.
The ship's manifest for the Dunbrody on 8th April 1849 names 176 people, ranging alphabetically from Bridges to Wickham, including more than 30 children, several of whom were infants, and two women that shared my name. In the records men were defined by their occupations and women by their marital statuses - even 15-year-old Bridget Bridges is listed as "spinster". Consequently we have no insights into the backgrounds, life experience or possible skill-sets of Catherine (aged 20) and Biddy (25). We have to imagine them.
Like many other vessels given over to famine passage, the Dunbrody was also a merchant ship, commissioned by the Graves family from New Ross and built in Québec, Canada. Famously, the Dunbrody lost few lives at sea, a fact widely attributed to the stewardship of sea captain John Williams. He's claimed as a New Ross man but according to a handwritten record from 1938 found on Duchas.ie he was "not from New Ross but was married to a New Ross woman" and his descendants went on to run a number of businesses on Quay Street in the town, including a "fancy warehouse". It’s fair to say that Captain Williams deserves a song of his own.
But back to the possibly related Keoghs. I say "possibly related" because they may have been related to one another and traveling together. It’s also not beyond the bounds of possibility that they are distantly related to me. In any case, they made it to the other side of the Atlantic and stepped off the Dunbrody in the port of New York, perhaps, as I pictured them, with a small suitcase each - a pair of packed valises as the song goes. We may have to imagine the rest but despite its dark origins, the song, like the journey they made, is in essence a story of hope.
Find out more about the Bring Your Own Hammer project here.
