The Irish Holocaust - An Droch Shaol
The potato and the blight
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We stop the press with very great regret to announce that the
potato murrain has unequivocally declared itself in Ireland. The
crops about Dublin are suddenly perishing....where will Ireland
be in the event of a universal potato rot?
Gardeners' Chronicle, September 13 1845
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THE POTATO was reputedly introduced by the English imperialist
Sir Walter Raleigh into his estates in County Cork in the 1580s.
It thrived in the mild and damp Irish climate and produced a good
yield even on marginal land.
easy crop to grow, it was palatable and nutritious for man and
beast and rapidly established itself as the principal food of the
Irish poor and the one or two livestock they kept to pay their
annual rent. An acre of ground could produce enough potatoes for
a family to survive on for most of the year.
The growth of Ireland's population from four million in the 1780s
to over nine million in 1845 is attributed to increasing
dependance on the potato. The potato also led to greater
sub-division of small-holdings with greedy landlords seeking
higher and higher rents for smaller plots of land. Most struggled
to eek out a living, working as farm labourers or keeping a pig
or two to pay the rent.
By the 1840s three million people depended on the potato, mainly
the higher-yielding Lumper variety, which unfortunately was not
as resistant as others to disease. The six weeks or so when the
old crop had diminished and the new crop was awaited were hungry
times for the poor. Fish, eggs, oatmeal, lard made up the scanty
rations on which they survived during this period.
Periodically there were partial failures of the potato crop due
to bad weather or disease. These caused hunger and hardship,
deaths from starvation or disease were common. These failures
were partial and rarely lasted for more than a season. This all
changed in the summer of 1845.
Coming from the US to Belgium in 1843, phytophthora infestans -
potato blight (An Dubhchán) - made its way to Ireland by August
20 1845 when it was first recorded in Dublin's Botanical Gardens.
Harvested and unharvested crops were destroyed, sometimes
overnight. In a letter Father Matthew describes one such
occasion:
``On the 27th (July) I passed from Cork to Dublin and this doomed
plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest.
Returning on the 3rd (August) I beheld with sorrow one wide waste
of putrefying vegetation. In many places the wretched people were
seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their
hands and wailing bitterly at the distraction that had left them
foodless.''
The hardship was increased with less being planted the following
year, with much of what should have been seed potatoes being
eaten. Only a quarter of the usual crop was harvested in 1846 and
1847 and a third in 1848.
Despite this, the potato continued to play a dominant role in the
Irish diet well into the 20th Century and several crop failures
in the latter half of the last century left people once more
starving and dependent on relief, charity or emigration to
survive. Never again was the Droch-Shaol - the bad life - to
return on a scale comparable to the Famine years.
By Aengus O Snodaigh
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