The Voyage

Contains songs from the musical drama of the same name by Mick Ryan. The show looks at aspects of emigration from Ireland and England in the mid nineteenth century. One of the main themes is the impact of the past upon the present. One of the main themes is the impact of the past upon the present. Ther show develops the idea of the past living on through memory, and begins to explain why emigrants were prepared to leave, and what made the terrors of the voyage less daunting than the horrors of the immediate past.

THE CAST

Mick Ryan
Jenny Hogan
Mike Birch
John Bond
Pete Watkinson
Martin Lee
John Prince
Carrie Jones
Paul Burke
Kerry Manning
Marilyn Campbell

THE MUSICIANS

Robert Harbron Concertina and Guitar
Tim Van Eyken Melodeon and Vocals
Paul Sartin Violin and Oboe

Cover Picture Marilyn Campbell

1. Voices From The Past (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
One of the main themes of the show is the impact of the past upon the present.
2. The Leaving Time (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
This deals with the pain of emigration; the distress of leaving the home of one’s forebears forever. It also tries to evoke the sense of emptiness and loneliness left behind.
3. Behind Me (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
Many emigrants may have been preoccupied with the hardships and injustices which drove them from their homes; others, no doubt, tried to put painful memories behind them and look to the future.
4. The Emigrant (Trad., adapted Mick Ryan)
This song was collected in Camden Town Workhouse around the turn of the century, and may be found in the first volume of ‘The Folk Song Journal’ of The English Folk Dance and Song Society, It has been substantially re-written for ‘The Voyage’, and explains why, in the mid to late 1840s, the Irish left their homeland in such vast numbers.
5. When We Take ‘Em Over (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
The crews of emigrant ships were well known for their mistreatment of the ‘steerage’ passengers travelling on the cheapest tickets in appalling conditions below deck. This was mainly because the shipping companies were paid in advance rather than upon the safe arrival of the emigrants
6. Sailing West (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
Many of the emigrants had never before seen either the ocean nor any vessel larger than a rowing boat; neither would many have previously done much in the way of travelling. Imagine the impact, then, of a full rigged ship on the Atlantic ocean on such people. This song tries to express the wonder and hope experienced by the emigrants, whatever their origins.
7. How Deep’s The Sea? (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
When children start asking questions, love is the only answer.
8. Green Island (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
This tries to deal with the deep feelings of loss and grievance which, in researching this project, I found expressed time and again in the utterances of Irish emigrants.
9. Lying Down (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
When we call Irishmen ‘Paddy’ we may use the term, in all innocence, as a jocular nickname. To the Irish, however, it can have very offensive connotations. During the Famine, such ‘relief’ as was attempted was incompetently organised and largely worse than useless. It included, for example, expecting those who were weak with starvation to work on back breaking and pointless road building schemes for wages which never arrived. When more, or more accurately some, relief was sought, ‘Punch’ and ‘The Times’ published cartoons of an ape-like and feckless ‘Paddy’ robbing a much put upon ‘John Bull’. ‘Paddy’ then, is seen by many as a term of racist abuse.
The reference to ‘lying down’ harks back to ‘Croppies Lie Down’, an ‘orange’ marching song dating from the 1798 rebellion. ‘Croppy’ was a pejorative term ridiculing the ‘democratic’ haircuts of the rebels.
10. Reprisals (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
This is sung, in the show, by an old man who was in the British Army in Ireland during the 1798 rebellion.
11. Prisoners of the Past (Words – Mick Ryan, Music – Mark Powell)
Each of us carries both the good and the bad aspects of our personal history around with us. This is part of what makes us what we are and creates new, and repeated, ‘history’.
12. The Sea (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
The Atlantic ocean beyond sight of land, is an awesome thing in itself; but when a storm hits…..
13. The Soldier’s Song (Part One) (Words – Mick Ryan, Music – Sarah Morgan)
This tells the story of the old soldier mentioned above.
14. Fever On Board (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
On the ‘death ships’, the official rules of hygiene were mostly ignored. As a result, many emigrants never made it ‘over’. The food, the water especially, and the living conditions, made fever virtually an inevitability on many ships. For dramatic purposes, the last verse links the deadly effects of ‘ship fever’ with the different but even more virulent ‘famine fever’ which had killed thousands in Ireland and driven the survivors to risk emigration in the first places
15. The Bargain (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
A cry of pain from the mother, the father, the wife, the husband of the dying. It is, perhaps, those who are left behind who suffer most.
16. Farewell my Child (Words – Mick Ryan, Music – Trad. adapted by Mick Ryan)
A mother’s lament for her dead child.
17. The Soldier’ s Song (Part Two) (Words – Mick Ryan, Music – Sarah Morgan)
Continues the old Man’s story.
During the summer of 1798, the town of Wexford was, for a brief Period, a republic along French Revolutionary lines. The ‘United Irishmen’, who led the rebellion, saw themselves as a non-sectarian organisation. The Wexford Republic was the height of their success. When, however, the town was about to fall into Government hands, ‘loyalist’ prisoners were taken out by a mob and piked to death on the bridge over the river Slaney and their bodies dumped in the water.
This brutal incident was used for propaganda purposes by the Government, and helped to drive the Protestants of the north more deeply into extreme ‘orangeism’. And the rest is history.
The O’ Connor’ mentioned is Feargus O’Connor, MP, who led the last great march of the Chartist movement on London in 1848. The event was something of a fiasco which discredited the campaign for universal suffrage and set it back many years.
Tom Paine was an English republican, author of ‘Rights of Man’ and ‘Common Sense’, a hero and polemicist of the French and American revolutions. When his bones were returned to England for burial, the servant of the friend who had them in keeping mistakenly threw them out as rubbish.
Wolfe Tone was one of the leaders of the ‘United Irishmen’ movement. He committed suicide in custody after the failure of the rebellion of 1798 and is a hero of present day Irish nationalism.
18. Home (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
This bespeaks the hope which springs from deep Christian or any other faith. Such belief makes any destination a ‘home’.
19. Safe Harbour (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
Expresses the emigrants desire for a place of refuge and security, and this is a metaphor for a universal human need.
20. Keep You in Peace (Words and Music – Sarah Morgan)
A song of farewell, based on an old Irish blessing.
21. The Promised Land (Words and Music – Mick Ryan)
A final anthem of hope that, in a new world, life could be better.