Liam's Irish Traditional Music - Irelands culture and tradition

The spores carrying the potato blight came from mainland Britain and Europe. Wind, rain and insects carried them. The evidence, which follows, outlines the story of the years of famine.

The people grow hungry:

Cowering wretches almost naked in the savage weather, prowling in turnip fields and endeavouring to grub up roots that had been left, and sometimes I could see in front of the cottages little children leaning against a fence 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 could never, oh it was too plain, grow up to be men and women

Source: John Mitchell, The Last Conquest of Ireland (perhaps), published in 1861

Winter, 1846-47:

A modern historian described the onset of these winter months:

Autumn was now passing into winter. The nettles and blackberries, the edible roots and cabbage leaves on which hundreds of people had been eking out an existence disappeared; flocks of wretched beings, resembling human scarecrows, had combed the blighted potato fields over and over again until not a fragment of a potato that was conceivably edible remained. At this moment of suffering unprecedented weather added greatly to the misery of the people. The climate of Ireland is famous for its mildness; years pass without a fall of snow; in the gardens of the south and west semi-tropical plants flourish.... In 1846, at the end of October it became cold, and in November snow began to fall.

Source: Cecil Woodham Smith, The Greaty Hunger, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1962

Many Irish people had sold their possessions for food, and had little warm clothing to protect them selves against the cold. The British government had begun to organize public work schemes, but many people were too ill and cold to work at all. With no money to buy food, thousands starved to death in the winter of 1846 and through the early months of 1847.