Famine Echoes is a groundbreaking oral account of the Great Irish Potato Famine of 1845–52, telling the stories of its victims for the first time ever in their own words and those of their descendants.
‘When the potato crop failed no other food was available and the people perished by the hundreds of thousands, along the roadside, in the ditches, in the fields from hunger and cold, and what was even worse – the famine fever. The strongest men were reduced to mere skeletons and they could be met daily with the clothes hanging on them like ghosts.’
The Great Irish Famine is the greatest tragedy in Irish history. Over one million people died and nearly two million emigrated as a result. Famine Echoes gives a voice to its victims, offering a unique perspective on the Great Hunger, the defining event of modern Irish history.
In Famine Echoes, descendants of Famine survivors recall the community memories of the great hunger in their own words, conveying like never before the heartbreak and horrors their relatives experienced. This remarkable book, a seminal record of the oral transmission of folk memory, is a record of the last living link with the survivors of Ireland’s most devastating historical event.
In the 1940s, the Folklore Commission conducted interviews with thousands of elderly people around Ireland who remembered what they themselves had heard from ancestors who had survived the Famine. Cathal Póirtéir has edited a selection of these recollections, arranging the material in an order which follows the rough chronology of the Famine itself.
Famine Echoes is published to coincide with the RTÉ Radio series of the same name.
Famine Echoes: Table of Contents
– Folk Memory and the Famine
– Before the Bad Times
– Abundance Abused and the Blight
– Turnips, Blood, Herbs and Fish
– ‘No Sin and You Starving’
– Mouths Stained Green
– ‘The Fever, God Bless Us’
– The Paupers and the Poorhouse
– Boilers, Stirabout and ‘Yellow Male’
– New Lines and ‘Male Roads’
– ‘Soupers’, ‘Jumpers’ and ‘Cat Breacs’
– The Bottomless Coffin and the Famine Pit
– Landlords, Grain and Government
– Agents, Grabbers and Gombeen Men
– ‘A Terrible Levelling of Houses’
– The Coffin Ships and the Going Away
– Of Curses, Kindness and Miraculous Food Appendix I
Appendix II
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Cathal Póirtéir is an author, journalist and PPI-awardwinning broadcaster. He has worked with RTÉ Radio 1 for over thirty years, producing programmes on a variety of topics from current affairs and politics to drama, music and literature, with a particular focus on Irish language programming.
He has produced a number of CDs about Irish literature, including Blasket Island Reflections, a series on the Blasket Island writers; The Appeals of the Midnight Court, a documentary about the poet Brian Merriman; and Traditional Tales of Wonder, a selection of folktales and legends from Donegal storyteller Micí Sheáin Néill.
He is the author of The Great Irish Famine, and Famine Voices and their Irish-language counterparts Gnéithe den Ghorta and Glórtha ón Ghorta. He is the editor of two collections – the short story collection Scéalta san Aer and the poetry collection Éigse san Aer.
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