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Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
“We saw sights that will never wholly leave the eyes that beheld them, cowering wretches, almost naked in the savage weather, prowling in turnip fields, and endeav- ouring to grub up roots which had been left, but running to hide as the mail coach rolled by; groups and families sitting or wandering on the high-road, with failing steps, and dim, patient eyes, gazing hopelessly into infinite darkness and despair; parties of tall, brawny men, once the flower of the land, stalking by with a fierce but vacant scowl, as if they realised that all this ought not to be, but knew not whom to blame, saw none whom they could rend in their wrath. Sometimes I could see, in front of the cottages, little children leaning against a fence when the sun shone out- for they could not stand-their limbs fleshless, their bodies half-naked, their faces bloated yet wrinkled, and of a pale greenish hue-children who would never, it was too plain, grow up to be men and women.”
(The Young Irelander, John Mitchell’s description of what he witnessed on a journey from Dublin to the West of Ireland)
Even though there were crop failures in the years leading up to it, the period referenced as An Gorta Mór - ‘The Great Irish Famine’ occurred in the years 1846 and 1847. The famine was caused by the the fungal disease Phytophthora Infestans - Potato Blight, which arrived here from Belgium and Holland about the end of August 1845 and again in the summer of 1846 when it was clear to all that the potato crop was wholly blighted.
Tragically, bad harvests and food shortages were nothing new in those days in Ireland. In fact from 1800 to 1801 and again in 1816-18, the country was afflicted by poor harvests and massive food shortages and until the establishment of the Poor Law in 1838 relief from such destitution was by private means or alternatively by local charities.
At the time, the population of Ireland was almost nine million, double what it is today, and a large percentage of the Irish population were wholly dependent for food on the hum- ble potato, hence the failure of the crop in such a thickly populated country was disastrous and resulted in widespread starvation and famine among the people. Records of the time show that about fifteen million tons of potatoes were being grown in Ireland per annum, of which somewhere between six and eight million tons formed the basic diet of around three million of the population: the remainder was either exported, retained for seed, part (mostly
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