The Famine The Famine was so severe and the people were so hungry that they were dying on the sides of the road from hunger. They used to boil the nettles and eat them. And where they used to see a man ploughing in a field, they would go in and scrape the clay, to see if they could get a white root called briosgain to eat it. There is a story told of a poor wandering woman, that called into a house of Mr. O Neill in the district of Lenemarla, in the morningSarah Goldberg