School: Drom Dhá Liag (B.) (roll number 12229)

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1. The Famine

   

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   The people suffered very much from starvation in the time of the famine. People died like flies and were thrown by the wayside. There lived in a place called the Murdering glen about mix miles to the west of Drimoleague a family of the O'Neills. There were nine in the family altogether. In the month of December 1846 two of the family died including the husband. The man's wife took them both on her back and buried them in Caheragh graveyard, several miles from her home. Tour more member died soon afterwards and she also took them and buried them. There were then two sons left with herself. One of them was taken away in a boat to some other land by a man called Galloway. He was never heard of afterwards. The were then two left a boy called Daniel and his mother. This boy survived the famine and lived to be eighty years. He is dead over 20 years which shows that he was only a boy in the time of the famine.
   There was an old graveyard about two hundred yards north of Drimoleague village and it was full of nettles. The people were so hungry that they used to cut boil and eat them. There is a very large hole in one side of the graveyard and it is said that it was made then to put the dead

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Language

   English

   Collector

   John Harrington

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Dromdaleague, Co. Cork

   Informant

   Mr Charles Mc Carthy

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Dromdaleague, Co. Cork