School: Connach, Inis Céin (roll number 10557)

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1. The Famine (continued)

   

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   the same year the death from hunger increased terribly around Bere Haven and Skibbereen. On Christmas eve Mr Cummins of Cork found two hundred persons almost mad with hunger near Skibbereen. A hundred and eight hungry men worked weekly. The over seer told them do to dinner. One half of them sat down by the ditches having nothing to eat. The others had coarse brown bread and water. The first two weeks of February eighteen forty seven there were sixty four interments in Ballymoney graveyard. One day in the same month ninety four coffins were sold in Dunmanway. In some cases two and three corpses were packed into one coffin and in other cases great numbers were buried without any coffins.The coffinless bodies, who were buried in kitchen gardens were rooted up by pigs and dogs and eaten. In May eighteen forty nine when the Famine had almost ended there was a number of farms and no one living in them. When a person sees an unmarked grave in an old cemetery the should saw a prayer for the bones and ashes

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Maighréad Ní Laoghaire

   Gender

   Female

   Age

   12

   Address

   Drom Fia, Co. Chorcaí