School: Baile Caisleáin an Róistigh (C.) (roll number 14108)

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1. Famine Times

   

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   My father has some stories which were told to him long ago by old people who remembered the famine times.
   An old man lived in the village of Castletownroche about twenty years ago. His name was James Regan, he was an Irish speaker and was born in the year 1829. He was therefore about eighteen years old in 1847, the year of the famine. He told my father that he saw people dying like flies by the roadside at that time, from hunger and famine fever. The sickness was so prevalent that it was hard to get people to bury the dead. James Regan told my father that he buried fourteen people from Castletownroche in one day in the local churchyard.
   All in the neighbourhood were sick or dying and James Regan had to bury the fourteen people himself unaided. He brought the corpses without coffins in a donkey car to the graveyard made a couple of good holes for them and buried the people in them.
   Ellen Barry an old woman who lived in Bridge St. Castletownroche told my father that she saw many people dying by the roadside in 1847. They had no food for days and when they got a supply of yellow meal to make porridge they ate it and their stomachs being so weak for want of food that it only killed them.

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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)

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Maureen Lenihan

   Gender

   Female

   Address

   Castletownroche, Co. Cork

   Informant

   Mr Patrick Lenihan

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Castletownroche, Co. Cork