An Irish Pikeman Dead in Chandler, 1901

 

Wicklow Pikeman of '98

Michael McGuiness (1835-1901)

It was with the smoked Irish in Chandler that I lived alone in a shack by the railway

but I come from the shadow of the Wicklow Mountains and the Pikemen of ‘98.

I fought four bloody year in your bleeding Civil War.

We were the Fighting Irish, all we'd ever ow’ed was war,

5) we toughened our hide under the the British boot—did it three hundred year.

They wanted to slave us like the black men in the South,

wanted us to wear the fecking yoke of bondage.

America should be the land where no man has to bow

but passing through New York and Chicago,

10) I saw signs said "No dogs or Irishmen.”

With the Illini went down to Dixieland, saw the black folk,

rags and tatters, shoeless, hungry, like in the Old Country. 

What faith we had was in the doing of it, divil a bit of God. 

Sod God, the Fenians said. 

15) I fought with the 16th Illinois and then the 60th,

powder burned me face, me eyes got bad.

In Kansas broke sod and split stone to build the railway,

rail-laying Irish like meself and former slaves, 

stopping our gob with Chinese grub.

20) Came to Chandler looking for land but was too old to bust sod,

got an invalid pension of $12 a month, sent it to me darling Jennie.

Folk laughed at me cause whenever I went to town

I carried all my ruck on my back, never knowing if I'd return.

To bivouac with the dead went I, and the G. A. R. paid a dollar for me plot.

25) The newspaper called me a harmless old man 

and said my lonely death had touched many folk 

too busy during my life to give a damn.

Ah shur and that was the grandest thing anybody ever wrote.

Commentary by line (avoiding standard sources like Wiki that are pro-British and anti-Irish):

1. smoked Irish is a term applied by Irish soldiers to black slaves.

2. Wicklow Mountains, Pikemen of ‘98: The 1798 Rebellion cost an estimated 30,000 lives on both sides, most of them in County Wexford, within a three-month period ending in July of 1798.

4. ow’ed: “owned” or possibly “knowed.”

14. Fenians: members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who planned an insurrection aimed at toppling British rule and establishing an Irish Republic.

19. stopping our gob with Chinese grub: filling our bellies with Chinese food. Many Chinese returned and started restaurants in areas where they had cooked for the men had laid the rails.

24. to bivouac with the dead: to lie in a cemetery.

25. G. A. R., Grand Army of the Republic, post-war fraternal organization of Union Soldiers.