About a hundred years ago the Irish people were very badly off. They were treated cruelly under English laws and had to pay very high rents to the landlords and heavy taxes. They were scarcely able to live owing to the way they were crushed and could not afford to buy proper food or clothing. At that time there were no such foodstuffs as flour or tea and sugar such as we use now and people had to depend on the potato crop for their food. They had to eat potatoes with milk for their three meals. In the year 1847 the potato crop failed and as they were depending on this crop for food they had nothing to eat. A great number of people died of hunger. Some people tried to live on boiled mangolds. The people who had the mangolds had to stay up all night watching them and those who had not any used to go out at night and steal a few to eat. Martin Kennelly of Dromin states that people used to make bread out of boiled turnips and mangolds minced with meal but few people could get the meal and the very poor people who had not much land had no mangolds or turnips set and had nothing to eat. These people used to go along streams and dykes and pick water cress which they ate. He also says that several people were found dead from hunger in dykes where they used go picking the water cress. Owing to the hunger and the sortElla DmitrievaAnaithnid