The Blight Bites

Pre-Famine

Before the Great Famine, Ireland faced smaller, less widespread, less enduring famines. One was caused by a virus known as “curl,” the other was a fungus that non-scientists called “dry rot” or “taint.”  Neither caused total crop failure like the fungus that brought on the Great Famine.

Ireland’s pre-famine population was approximately 8,175,124.   That population depended heavily on potatoes.  The average family needed four tons of potatoes annually. Adult males ate 14 pounds of potatoes daily; adult females and children 11-15 years old ate 11.2 pounds, and children under 11 ate 4.9 pounds.  They ate and traded livestock, but even the animals ate potatoes!

“Wealthy landlords lived in grand houses such as this one in county Sligo.  Laborers and small farmers lived simply in cottages with mud floors and low, thatched roofs” (Prior, 5).  Left photo (Prior, 5),  right Illustration (http://adminstaff.vassar.edu/sttaylor/famine).

“For years the Irish fought back against the English settlers, but they were repeatedly defeated by the English armies and Catholics were slowly deprived of their economic and political power.  Soon nearly all the wealth in Ireland was owned by Protestants... From 1801 until 1921, Ireland was ruled directly by the British parliament at Westminster in London”  (Prior, 6).

“Most farmers and their families did not eat any grain that they grew but sold it for cash and lived on potatoes instead”  (Prior, 5).

The Great Famine...An Gorta Mor (The Great Hunger)...The Great Starvation...God's Visitation... The Great Calamity... Irish Holocaust