School: Teach Mhic Conaill (roll number 15614)

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1. Famine Times

   

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   Old people have heard from their fathers and grandfathers many stories about the terrible famine of eighteen forty-six and forty-seven. The famine years were and are still called 'Black forty-six and forty-seven'.

   It affected the district very much. There is only one family at the present day where sixteen and eighteen families were before the famine. A terrible lot of people died in the district, but few ruins of houses now remain as they are nearly all gone. It is said that the year prior to the famine year the potatoes were so plentiful that the people could afford to throw them beside walls and ditches and into bogholes, and that was the time potatoes were first called 'spuds'. The potato crop failed at first, it is said, by a terrible frost which came and ate them all up. They rotted in the ground. The people sowed the buds the following year for seed. Some managed to gather a few very small potatoes. They shook the buds broadcast like grain.

   The people had Indian meal for food instead, from which they made stirabout. It is said that an old Mrs. Galvin, who

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Topics

   1. time
      1. historical periods by name (~25)
         1. the great famine (~4,013)

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Mollie Costello

   Gender

   Female

   Informant

   John Galvin

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Knock, Co. Roscommon