About ninety years ago there came a great famine in Ireland. The crops all failed. The potato crop was blighted, and a lot of people died with hunger. They had no food and it was very hard for them to live. The people died on the side of the roads and everywhere with hunger.

The poor farmers were badly hit as they had no money to buy food and when their crops failed, they had no food to live on. The shopkeepers would not give them any food when they had no money to pay for it. The children died in their mothers' arms.