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(Atheneum, 2002. ISBN: 0-689--84226-0)
I heard me aunt say it was nothing to see a woman with six or seven
children come into a house that time looking for a bite to eat, and the woman of
the house would give her a noggin of milk and stirabout made of oaten meal.
—Kate Flood, County Longford, Ireland (Irish Folklore Commission Main
Manuscript Collection Volume 1480:136-137)
The Great Irish Potato Famine--the Great Hunger--was one of the worst disasters of the nineteenth century. Within seven years of the onset of a fungus that wiped out Ireland's staple potato crop, more than one quarter of the country's eight million people had either starved to death, died of disease, or emigrated to other lands. Photographs have documented the horrors of other cataclysmic times in history--slavery and the Holocaust--but there are no known photographs whatsoever of the Great Hunger.
In Feed the Children First, Mary E. Lyons combines first-person accounts of those who remembered the Great Hunger with artwork that evokes the times and places and voices themselves. The result is a close-up look at incredible suffering, but also a celebration of joy the Irish took in stories and music and helping one another--all factors that helped them endure.
The Great Famine lasted from 1845-1852. The 150th anniversary is still being observed in Ireland and America. Read about the Famine Museum in Ireland. The "Irish Hunger Memorial" was dedicated in New York City on July 16, 2002. Learn more about the memorial. See more Famine memorials in Ireland, Great Britain, the U.S., and Canada.
Map of the counties courtesy of Local Ireland http://www.local.ie/ World map courtesy of www.worldatlas.com |