School: Cluain Fhada (roll number 15091)
- Location:
- Cloonfad More, Co. Roscommon
- Teacher: Eibhlín Ní Thighearnáin
Open data
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- XML School: Cluain Fhada
- XML Page 148
- XML “Famine Times”
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On this page
- The year eighteen forty six was the year of the Great Famine. All the crops failed and the people had no store laid up. All the oats was sent out to the foreign countries that year. Potatoes and milk were all the people had to depend on. They perished by hundreds and thousands, in the houses, in the fields, from hunger and cold. Here and there, by the roadside a corpse stares at the passers by as it lies against the hedge where it sought shelter. Around its mouth were darkened lines of green, the dry juice of grass and nettles. All day long the carts were going to the grave yards with uncoffined loads. In the towns it was worse. The shops were shut. Great fires blazed at the corners of the streets to purify they air. At the government stores starving people dipped their hand into the boiling maize or Indian meal and swallowed the burning food. A priest was called from his bed at every night. He knelt in the mud over the figure and administered last rites, while someone held an umbrella over his head to guard the sacred oils.(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Kitty Callaghan
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Lahagboy, Co. Roscommon
- Informant
- James Callaghan
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Lahagboy, Co. Roscommon