School: Mount Plunkett (roll number 8096)
- Location:
- Mountplunkett, Co. Roscommon
- Teacher: Bríd Ní Bheirn
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0265, Page 159
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Mount Plunkett
- XML Page 159
- XML “Famine Times”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- Famine Times
The famine occured in 1846 and 1847. This famine was nearly the means of leaving Ireland without any inhabitants. It took great effect on this district also.
During the famine years thousands of people died. There was a blight on the potatoes and in those days the people were depending on the potatoes more than anything else. When the potatoes failed the people had nothing to eat only Indian meal and turnips, and some of the people were to be seen "brisosgains" out of the fields.
The year after the famine the people of Ireland had to get seed potatoes from Scotland and some of them used to sow the buds of the potatoes. When the famine was nearly over the English sent over indian meal and they afterwards started the Public works in Ireland such as, making roads and ditches to give the people a chance to work. They had to work for fourpence a day and some of them only got a half stone of Indian meal. The English Government also gave fifty pounds to the Irish. Dierea followed the famine and of course this killed many of the people, and the few people that were(continues on next page)
- Informant
- Malacky Kelly
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 75
- Occupation
- Smith
- Address
- Killeenrevagh, Co. Roscommon
