School: Faithlegg (B.), Portláirge (roll number 11614)
- Location:
- Faithlegg, Co. Waterford
- Teacher: Peter Lyons
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0653, Page 51
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- XML “Famine Times”
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- Written by: James Doherty
River-View House,
Cheekpoint.Material from: Mr. James Nugent
No2. Cottage
Cheekpoint
Age-Famine TimesIt's many a story I have heard from the old men of the place about the Great Famine. An old man told me that the poor people used to go to the strand and gather the sea-weeds and other weeds to bring home to boil. Others got work repairing and making roads. Their pay was three-halfpence a day and some got a little bag of meal. More people went to their potato fields and dug out some of the black potatoes to eat them. If they did not eat some of the potatoes they would starve. All this happened in the "black forty seven" as the old man said.Many of the houses which went to ruin in the famine times were rebuilt and many people are living in them now.The blight on the potato-crop came just as it comes now but came very much heavier. Every potato dug up that year was black.In the following years a great sickness spread over the country. People died in geat numbers. The sickness was just as bad as the famine.
- Collector
- James Doherty
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Cheekpoint, Co. Waterford
- Informant
- Mr James Nugent
- Relation
- Unknown
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Cheekpoint, Co. Waterford
