School: Cornagon (roll number 15690)

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1. The Famine

   

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   The old people have some stories about the famine. They say that it did alot of harm to the district I live in because[?] fourty houses in the town lands of Donera and Corabegh and they were all wiped away with the famine. Some of the families were Feeherty, Doran, McCullagh, McGarty, Noble, Fanning, Murphy.
   That year the blight came on the potato stalks and they withered into the ground, and there were only small potatoes left for the next. They pulled the buds of the small potatoes and planted them.
   Any person that planted potatoes had to stay up at night watching them because they might be taken up again.
   When the potatoes rotted the people had nothing to eat. They used to eat various kinds of roots such as the “Brioscan” roots “water-cress” “turnips” and also they used to take off the out side of the cabbage stump and eat it. They drew blood of cattle and drank it for substance
   After this they got a relief in the form of meal from England and from this they made porridge. This meal was distributed in the poor house and a lot of people [?]on the roads going for it. The people ground the oats at home by means of querns .
   When they got the meal first they did not know how to use it. They used not thicken it enough and it used to splatter out at them and one used to have to go up on the loft with a big long

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Brigid Canning

   Gender

   Female

   Address

   Corgallion, Co. Leitrim