The weather was straight out of Black '47. A howling wind twice sent the crowd-control barriers crashing down and sleety rain drenched the masses huddled together for warmth on Dublin's Custom House Quay.
But any similarities with the 1840s ended there. Most of the crowd assembled for the unveiling of the first "family name" plaques at the Famine memorial yesterday were themselves monuments to the improved diet of the 20th century.
The gaunt figures represented in Rowan Gillespie's sculpture might, had they been alive, have felt proud at how well their descendants had turned out, even if the living faces matched some of the sculpted misery as they waited for a delayed President, Mrs McAleese, to arrive and cut the ribbon.
The McAleese family's name is one of the first 100 now enshrined in bronze among the cobbles at the foot of the statues, alongside those of such assorted luminaries as Gerry Adams (who was present for the unveiling) and John Hume, Gay Byrne, Jack Charlton and Richard Branson (who were not). The Irish Famine Commemoration Fund hopes the less well-known members of Ireland's extended international family will follow suit, at £750 each.
The plaques make for some unlikely partnerships. John Bruton shares his with Gerry Adams, while dancers Michael Flatley and Wayne Sleep are grouped with President Clinton, whose own fast feet are legendary. The 100 names also include that of yacht-owner and Monte Carlo tax exile, Dr Michael Smurfit, in his own way the perfect symbol of the hundreds of thousands who sailed across the sea from Ireland in the hope of a better life.
Norma Smurfit, whose initiative the memorial is, assured potential investors that their names would be "tastefully done in bronze". Then, in what seemed like a Freudian slip, she spoke of the problem of homelessness and the many people in London "living in cardboard boxes, of Irish descent". We knew what she meant, although the unintended reference to the Smurfit company's packaging products was one to savour.
The Taoiseach or John Bruton or the presidents of Ireland and the US were not asked to pay for the privilege. Everybody else in the celebrity contingent made "undisclosed" contributions, but not necessarily £750, a spokeswoman said.
