School: Tara Hill (roll number 13689)

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1. Public Works (continued)

   

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   88

   Public Works - The Famine

   The story is likely enough because in the old times people used to pass children under a donkey's belly to cure the chin cough. (Ass's milk was also used for same purpose.
   (The food doled out was a sort of soup made of meal + fish boiled up together. It was invented by a French-man who came to Dublin.

   Work
   Smith's Lane at Tara Hill + my own (i.e. Bryan Mc Guire) lane at Cronellard + the Tincurragh lane down to Patrick Noctor's were made during the famine. The men on the job were paid 6d or eight pence a day. Only a small number of starving people were released.
   Great numbers of people especially the young people left these parts for America and other places. I remember learning that there were up to thirty families on Smith's farm alone. There is only one to-day. Some of those peoples' names were Cullens, Binions, Murphy, Canavan, Noctor, Crannel + Doyles. There is hardly a trace of their homes today but sometimes Jim Neill Smith's ploughman turns up paving stones when ploughing those fields.

   Above taken down from
   Bryan Maguire
   Cromellard, Inch. (Parish of Gorey.)
   Born 1869

   

   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. objects
      1. man-made structures
         1. public infrastructure
            1. roads (~2,778)

   Language

   English

   Informant

   Bryan Maguire

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Cronellard, Co. Wexford