School: Kilbeggan (B.)
- Location:
- Kilbeggan, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: P. Mac Siúrtáin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0732, Page 526
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: Kilbeggan (B.)
- XML Page 526
- XML “Story of 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
- Mrs. Delaney a widow found it very difficult to keep herself and her family alive during the famine period. Each day she made an oaten meal griddle cake, on which she fed her family by giving them so much per day together with milk. The crumbs remaining she carefully looked away.This day her griddle cake was cooking nicely on the hearth, so she decided to go to the well for water, leaving her son Joe in charge of the cake. In her absence a poor boy came to the door. begging something to eat. He was starving with the hunger not having tasted food for days. Generous kind hearted Joe gave the starving boy a nice hot square of the oaten cake, and just as he did his mother returned.In those days the water was carried in a wooden pail which was made by the cooper and was carried on the head.The timid boy overjoyed with his meal jumped when he heard the step and had the misfortune to knock Mrs. Delaney and the pail flat on the ground. When she regained her feet the boy had cleared and Joe made himself scarce for the evening. This story is told by Mrs. Delaney (80-90 yrs) Tonaphort who is a daughter in-law to the Mrs. Delaney mentioned in the story.
- Collector
- Maureen Hurley
- Gender
- Female
