Let Erin Remember: The Crimes Against Lough Neagh

Let Erin Remember is a powerful and poetic exploration of environmental and cultural injustice, using the haunting Irish song Let Erin Remember as a guide through the destruction and pollution of Lough Neagh—once a sacred and mythologically rich lake at the heart of Ireland. This podcast unpacks the ecological crisis facing Lough Neagh, contextualizing it as a symptom of deeper colonial legacies.

Through the lens of Irish history, myth, and song, we examine the lake’s ancient origins as Lough Neathach, tied to the Dagda of Irish mythology, and expose how colonial ownership and mismanagement have devastated this once-pristine body of water. We draw striking parallels to other colonially renamed and claimed landmarks—from Uluru in Aboriginal Australia to Lake Victoria in Africa and Mount Everest in the Himalayas—highlighting the global pattern of erasure and appropriation.

We delve into the work of Thomas Moore, whose collection of Irish melodies preserved the cultural soul of a nation, and argue that songs like Let Erin Remember act as cultural memory against colonial forgetting. The podcast also critiques the shallow coverage often seen in modern media, urging a deeper, historically grounded understanding of the crisis at Lough Neagh.

Rooted in myth, melody, and memory, this podcast is both an act of resistance and a call to restore the sacred—to the land, the language, and the water.