School: Lismacaffry
- Location:
- Lismacaffry, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: Ml. Ó Gamhna
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0739, Page 244
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- (continued from previous page)in the ridges, so when the people came to dig them they were all decayed. Some of the people would go into fields and eat the turnips raw to keep themselves from starving to death. In this locality there was a lot of people and a lot of them died. The people would eat anything to keep themselves alive.
It is said that the year before the famine there was a lot of potatoes. When the people went to dig there was a great lot of big potatoes and they were not able to use all of them. Some of the people of this locality left them in the ridges when they had enough dug to do them and threw some of them in to the ditches.
Indian meal is mostly what the people lived on, when they made it into porridge. They had no oats because the Land-lord took away all the oats for tax money.
- The great famine occurred in the years 1846 and 1847 caused by the blight that destroyed the potato-crop in the summer of 1845. The Irish people left themselves(continues on next page)
- Informant
- Christy Newman
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 57
- Address
- Coolnagun, Co. Westmeath
