School: Tíréaltan, Maghcromtha (roll number 13286)

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1. Famine Times (continued)

   

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   potato was his and their only resource was filled with terror and dismay. The doomed people realized but too well what was before them. The year 1846 thus closed in darkness and gloom but in the new year the gloom deepened and the horrors were greater still. The famine effected my native country very severly : people died in the fields : they died in the workhouses where fever following famine did what famine was unable to do. My father often relates a story which he heard about an afflicted father who took the dead bodies of his seven children to the graveyard alone and there buried them as funerals ceased to be attended. In this locality I have heard of a case where twelve corpses were left in a certain house and not buried atal but were eaten by rats and dogs Coffins became a luxury and in Skilbbereen and elsewhere hinged coffins were used one body after another being brought to the grave in the same coffin. The unburied corpses the unattended funerals the pitiful pleadings of the hungry the torture of the fever- stricken ceased to arouse pity in this part of the country as overpowering calamity had dried up the fountains of compassion. On the streets and roads women and children once modest

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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

   Joan O' Riordan

   Gender

   Female

   Informant

   Eugene O' Riordan

   Gender

   Male

   Age

   65

   Address

   Cooldorragha, Co. Cork