School: Gubaveeny

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1. The Famine

   

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   My great grandmother, Ellen Dolan of Gubaveeney was alive the time of the famine, and she told my father all about it. That year, there were no crops, because the potatoes were affected by the blight in June. They were so small when they were being dug that the greatest amount anyone had, was the full of a small barrel. The next year they had to be sowed like corn-that was the year 1846. The food the people used was oaten gruel and chicken weed. This is how they prepared it. They cut the chicken weed into small pieces and mixed it through the gruel and boiled it. Her people had a crop of oatmeal from the year before: that left them plenty during the famine. She told my father, of an old woman with a child on her back, who came in for a "noggin" of gruel and she offered her a bit for the child. When she left her hand on the child's hand it was dead. She was going to bury the child at Killinagh. It was dead for a week. There was a man with a stocking of gold and another man with a stocking of meal living in Gubaveeney, and they both went to the mountain to hide. The man with the gold got hungry and he bought the meal with the gold. The man who sold the meal died and the other man

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Language

   English

   Informant

   Mr Michael Mc Loughlin

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Gubaveeny, Co. Cavan