School: Lios Uí Bhigín (B.) (roll number 8791)

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1. The Famine Years - How the People 'Got On' during the Bad Times in '46 and '47

   

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   The Famine years - how the people "got on" during the bad Times in '46 -'47.
   Related in the year 1900 by the late John Kelliher, Clash Killarney who was born in the year 1829.
   "I haven't much Irish but I understand a share of it when spoken slowly. I remember my father and mother speaking Irish when they didn't want us to understand and I heard my mother saying her prayers in Irish.
   I was eight years old when the famine came. Around this place there wasn't as much scarcity. I remember my father say he saw a big crowd in town one day looking for food and for work. The potatoes were bad in a lot of places and were small. The people had a share of work here and there and the Bishop and clergy as well as the gentry did their best, but all the same the Workhouse in Killarney was full of people young and old. One day I was in town with my father I saw a man coming up the street very slowly and feebly. All of a sudden he staggered and fell. He was helped into a house but after an hour or so I heard he was dead and that it was hunger was the cause of his death.
   I never heard of any Soupers in this place but there were some people name Leahy, who lived in Clash and who worked at Herberts. The eldest used go to Bible teaching class on Sundays and often on his way home on Sunday evening he used have a fine piece of meat in parcels under his arm. The young

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Topics

   1. time
      1. historical periods by name (~25)
         1. the great famine (~4,013)
         2. penal times (~4,335)

   Languages

   Irish

   English

   Informant

   John Kelliher

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Clash, Co. Kerry