In the year 1846 a great famine broke out in my district in Rossmore, Carrigtwohill, Co. Cork. This is one of the stories about the famine. There was a woman named Mary Cashman and she was nursing a baby. Next day a man came into the house and he saw the woman dead and the baby was living. The cause of this famine was that all the crops failed to grow and all the cattle died. The people used feed on leaves and grass and a lot of them died. There was a ship with a cargo of two hundred tons of wheat and provisions for the starved people arrived at Passage West, Co. Cork. But the English ordered the ship to go to England. The government would not help the Irish. Lots of Irish went to America and other countries. America helped the Irish. England then helped Ireland but it was too late. They were afraid they would get strong. Ireland then had a population of 8,000,000. Now it has only 3,000,000 and three quarters. There was about nine hundred people in this parish before the Famine. The potatoes rotted in the pits. The people ateHelen O'