By degrees those outlaws
discovered that the potato, coming from the high moist soil of Quito,
found in the half-barren wilds of Ireland, if not a climate, a soil at
least congenial to its nature. It was palatable food, as it became
acclimatized; it grew where no other plant fit for human food would
grow; it was a great fertilizer; it was prolific: no wonder the poor
Celt of our bogs and mountains, in time, made the potato more associated
with the name of Ireland than it ever was with its native country,
Virginia.
Before 1729 we have no record of the potato having suffered from blight
or frost, or anything else. But this is not to be wondered at; even
though such things occurred, the outlaws, who were its chief
cultivators, excited neither interest nor pity in the hearts of the
ruling minority. They were watched and feared; they were known to be
numerous; and many were the plans set on foot to reduce their numbers,
and cause them to become extinct, like the red deer of their native
hills. Surely, then, a potato blight, followed by a famine, would not be
regarded as a calamity, unless it affected the English colony. The
Celtic nation in Ireland could have no record of such a visitation,
unless in the fugitive ballad of some hedge schoolmaster.
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