School: Ballymore (B.) (roll number 7443)

Location:
Ballymore, Co. Westmeath
Teacher:
P.J. Cooney
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0743, Page 288

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0743, Page 288

Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.

See copyright details.

Download

Open data

Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

  1. XML School: Ballymore (B.)
  2. XML Page 288
  3. XML “The Famine”

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

  1. In 1847 the potato crop failed everywhere and the people died by tens of thousands on the roadside. This is a story of a many by the name of Scott who lived in Mullaghmeehan at that time.
    He was living in a small mud-wall cabin in the middle of my father's farm. He had a half an acre of potatoes sown. When the time came for to dig them, he began the work himself. He was very old and was not able to dig much in a day.
    When he had about a quarter of them dug the rest began to rot in the ground. All he had dug were safe and when he had them eaten he had nothing more to live on, so he left his house and went through the country looking for food. He did not live long and died a few days later with starvation.
    The remains of the house can be seen still. They are
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Matthew Kearney
    Gender
    Male
    Age
    13
    Address
    Mullenmeehan, Co. Westmeath
    Informant
    Mrs Kearney
    Relation
    Parent
    Gender
    Female
    Address
    Mullenmeehan, Co. Westmeath