School: Baile an Bhile (B.) (roll number 12195)
- Location:
- Ballinvilla Demesne, Co. Mayo
- Teacher: John F. Higgins
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0110, Page 064
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: Baile an Bhile (B.)
- XML Page 064
- XML “The Famine Years”
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
- This district was greatly afflicted by the Famine of 1845-47. There wer about 50% more people in this district then than now. The blight came when the potatoes were growing. It is supposed that the people were advised by the clergy not to sow any potatoes the second year. Very few people sowed them the second year but anybody that sowed them had a good crop. Everybody had a good crop of oats but they were obliged to sell it in order to pay the rent. It may be well said of the famine there was starvation in the midst of plenty. The seed was very scarce and the seed that was sown was apple-potatoes. In 1847 Relief Works were started but the people were too weak to work. After a while Indian meal was distributed and the works were stopped. A great number of people died of disease. There was no shortage of food on account of the potatoes rotting since then.
- Collector
- John Finn
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Cuiltycreaghan, Co. Mayo
- Informant
- Thomas Murphy
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Cuiltycreaghan, Co. Mayo
