Bartoletti - Black Potatoes

Copyright 2001 by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

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Maps by Jay Evans

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Bartoletti, Susan Campbell.

Black potatoes : the story of the great Irish famine, 18451852 / Written by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.
p. cm.

1. IrelandHistoryFamine, 18451852Juvenile literature. [l. IrelandHistoryFamine, 18451852.] I. Title.

DA950.7 B37 2001
941.5081dc21 2001024156

ISBN 978-0-618-54883-5 paperback

eISBN 978-0-547-53085-7
v1.0714

For Brandy, with love

It takes a clochn to write a book. I am extremely grateful to the many people who helped me along the way in completing this work: Buochas a ghabil leis na muintir na hireann as a gcineltas agus a bhfilte liom; Professor Liz Rosenberg, for her quiet, calm persuasion and generous support; Professors Libby Tucker, Tom Dublin, and Leslie Heywood, for their careful readings; the librarians at Binghamton University and especially interlibrary-loan goddess Helen Insinger, for her amazing patience and doggedness; Crostir Mac Crthaigh, Department of Irish Folklore, University College Dublin, Ireland, for allowing me access to the main manuscript collection and responding generously to my many questions; librarians at the National Library of Ireland, the County Clare Library in Ireland, and the British Library, Newspaper Library, for their assistance; t m faoin chomaoin ag Kim Allen, my Irish language teacher, for her friendship and expertise; Dr. Brett Yarczower and Elizabeth Partridge, for their medical expertise; George Pugh, photographer extraordinaire; my editor and friend Kim Keller, who saw the need for this book; my daughter, Brandy, for her good humor and assistance in research; my son, Joey, for his ability to put things in perspective; and my husband, Joe, for his unflagging support and willingness to live with a horizontal space usurper.

In Ireland long ago, there were good times,

not your time nor my time but somebodys time...

T RADITIONAL BEGINNING TO AN I RISH FOLKTALE

I N 1845 A DISASTER struck Ireland. A mysterious blight attacked the potato crops, destroying the only real food of Irelands rural population. Over the next five years, the blight attacked again and again. These years are known today as the Great Irish Famine, a time when one million people died from starvation and disease. Two million more fled their homeland and emigrated to the United States, Canada, and Britain. Most Famine victims were Irish Catholics, who comprised 80 percent of Irelands population. Most lived in great poverty. Most spoke only Irish. Most could not read and write.

Though many Famine survivors refused to speak of their suffering and loss, others passed on their memories to their children and grandchildren, who later told the stories to field-workers researching the Famine. The field-workers wrote them down. In many cases, these records are the closest that we can get to the experiences of ordinary people during the Famine years. Collected within one hundred years of the Famine, they contain extraordinary accounts of life in Ireland.

This book tells the story of the Great Irish Famine, through the eyes and memories of the Irish people. You will read about how they lived, why their lives depended on the potato, how they dreaded the workhouse, and how they feared and defied the landlord and his agent who collected the rent and evicted them. You will read the stories of children and adults who discovered the black potatoes, who searched desperately for food, who suffered from starvation and disease, and who died. You will meet many ordinary people as well as political leaders, public servants, and charitable groups who worked hard to provide relief for the starving Irish but who could not prevent a huge loss of life.

One of the saddest things about the Famine years is that for each horrible story, there is always another more tragic and dreadful. Yet for every tragic story, you will also meet people who held on to hope, who committed heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and who fought to survive and to preserve their dignity.

Health and a long life to you

Land without rent to you

A child every year to you

And if you cant go to heaven

May you at least die in Ireland.

A TRADITIONAL I RISH TOAST

T HE WEATHER IN I RELAND has always been fickle, but the weather during the summer of 1845 was worse than the oldest people could remember. First the July days burned hot, much hotter than usual. After several days, the hot spell ended and the weather turned gloomy, cold, and damp. For three weeks in August, heavy rains fell every day.

The changeable weather made some people uneasy. They had heard reports about potato fields that had blackened overnight in some parts of Ireland. They watched their crops for signs of decay, but the plants appeared to be thriving, with their tiny purple flowers, large flat green leaves, and sturdy stalks. The people couldnt see the potatoes, which grew on stems beneath the ground, but they prayed that the tubers were swelling, large and round.

In 1845 most of Irelands rural population depended on potatoes as their staple food. From August until May, six million men, women, and children ate potatoes for breakfast, lunch, and supper, an average of seven to fifteen pounds per person each day They ate potatoes boiled, roasted, and mashed with buttermilk and onions. They ate potato cakes, potato bread, and potato soup. Even the pigs, cows, and chickens ate potatoes.

Not everyone was alarmed by the reports of the blackened fields. Some people reminded themselves that the potato crop had failed in the past, but the previous failures were never widespread. They were partial failures, usually localized to a few counties.

Newspapers optimistically predicted an abundant harvest from the more than two million acres of potatoes that were sown. It was hoped that the harvest would be as plentiful as the previous year, when there had been so many potatoes that farmers couldnt sell them all. They dumped some in the ditches as they returned from market and left others to rot in the fields for fertilizer.

A G REAT C ALAMITY

The potatoes were harvested twice each fall. The early crop, called new potatoes, was lifted in late August and the general crop, called old potatoes, was lifted in October. In County Cork, when it grew time to harvest the early crop, fourteen-year-old Diarmuid ODonovan Rossa helped his family dig out the reddish-colored tubers. As his father lifted the potatoes from the ground with his long-handled spade, Diarmuid and his family saw that the new potatoes had grown to a good size, despite the unstable weather. It was a great relief.