School: Blacklion
- Location:
- Blacklion, Co. Cavan
- Teacher: F. Johnston
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0962, Page 183
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Blacklion
- XML Page 183
- XML “Famine Times”
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
- The great famine started in 1845, and lasted until 1847. In the year 1845 the blight began for the first time, and it spread quickly over the crops, and the crops failed all at once. The poor people were stricken with despair. They had neither food nor money to buy it. The potato was their principal food. Thousands died of sickness and starvation. They had to eat raw turnips, and seaweed, and weeds. They used to go through the country and gather weeds, and boil them with salt, and eat them. Some of the local farmers bought bags of rice and lived mostly on boiled rice. Others lived on oatmeal porridge, they used to bring(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Rupert Elliott
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Mullaghbane, Co. Fermanagh
- Informant
- Mr A. Elliott
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Mullaghbane, Co. Fermanagh
