School: Glascorn (roll number 16615)
- Location:
- Glascarn, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: Mrs Hope
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0736, Page 246
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Glascorn
- XML Page 246
- XML “Famine Times”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- (continued from previous page)to America when food became scarce. The ruins of their old houses are still to be seen.The first sign of the blight the people noticed was brown spots on the stalks. Then the stalks withered and the potatoes decayed in the ground. After the Famine seed-potatoes were imported from Scotland for the following year. That year the potatoes were sown in ridges.Instead of potatoes the people ate Indian meal and vegetables and they used to hunt for rabbits and hares. They also boiled nettles and ate them. But the poor people had nothing at all to eat when the potatoes failed and they went from house to house begging. Government Relief came to Rathconrath and Loughnavalley. This consisted of a pound of Indian meal to each (one) person every day. Very often the people boiled and ate the(continues on next page)
- Informant
- Joseph Reilly
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 65
- Occupation
- Farmer
- Address
- Balleagny, Co. Westmeath
