Irelands Hunger

Chalmers Family Cork

 

artist: Anne Therese Dillen

 

A story of the Famine

An Irish Catholic priest, Peadar O' Laoghaire, (1839-1920),wrote in the Irish language. In one of his writings "Mo Sceal Fein", My own Story - he tells the true story of a young West Cork family during the height of the famine in Cork.

" The famine came. Sheila and her father and her mother and little Jeremiah had to go down to Macroom into the poorhouse. No sooner were they inside than they were all separated from each other. The father was put among the men, the mother among the women. Sheila among the small girls and Jeremiah among the very small children. The whole house, and all the poor people in it, was smothered in every kind of evil sickness, the people, almost as fast as they'd come in, falling down with a malady and - God bless the hearers! - dying as fast as the fever came on them. There used not be room for half of them in the house. The amount that would not be able to get in could only go and lay themselves on the bank of the river, on the lower side of the bridge. You would see them there every morning, after the night was over, stretched out in rows, some stirring, some quiet enough without any stir at all out of them. In a while certain men would come and they would take those, who were not stirring, and they would put them into trucks. They would take them to a place beside Carrigastyra, where a great, wide, deep hole had been opened for them, and they would put them all together down into the hole. They would do the same with all who had died in the house after the night.

It was not too long, after their going in and after his separation from his mother, that death came to little Jeremiah. The small body was thrown up on the truck and taken to the big hole, and it was thrown in along with the other bodies. But it was all the same to the child: long before his body was thrown in the hole, his soul was in the presence of God, in the joys of the heavens. It was not long until Sheila followed little Jeremiah. Her young body went into the pit, but her soul went up to where Jeremiah was, in the presence of God, in the joys of the heavens.

The father and mother were asking and questioning as often as they were able about Sheila and little Jeremiah. The children were not long dead when they heard about it. All the poor people had Gaelic. The superiors hadn't got it, or spoke it poorly. As soon as the father and mother found out that the children had died, such a grief and brooding came over them that they could not stay in the place. They decided to steal away together. The wife's name was Kit. Patrick slipped out and waited for Kit at the top of the Road of the Whisps. She came slowly, the sickness was on her. They pushed on towards Carrigastyra and came to the place of the big hole. They stood beside the hole where their two children had been thrown, and wept.

They moved off with the sorrow, up to Derryleigh to the east of the Caharin where their cabin was. Six miles to the top, night was falling. After a few miles Kit could go no further. A neighbour came across them , drink and a little food was given them. But all were afraid to take them in for fear of the sickness. Patrick lifted Kit on his back and struggled on up the mountain to the cabin. Patrick was very weak himself and had to stop often but he moved on and on. He reached the little cabin with no food, it was cold and empty.

The following morning a neighbour came to the cabin. Inside he saw both dead - the feet of the woman in Patrick's bosom, as if he had tried to warm them."

So ended the life of a young family.

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