The Famine
25th May 1938
About 96 years ago there was a great famine in Ireland. The potatoes and all the crops rotted. The people were starving and dying with the hunger.
When the people had nothing to eat the English used to send yellow-meal to them. They ate it, but no sooner had they eaten it than they died because the English had put poison in it. They at last stopped eating it. They were also eating grass and dockens. They used to be often dying and the docken leaf in their mouths. If there was a priest round the place he would anoint the dying person. But sure the priest would die as often as the people.
“INFORMANT: Mr Ruane, Age 48, Tawnagh More, Co. Mayo”