Seven deaths from
starvation near Cootehill was the announcement from a locality supposed
not to be at all severely visited. In Clifden, County Galway, the
distress was fearful; 5000 persons there were said to be trying to live
on field roots and seaweed. A Catholic priest who was a curate in the
County Galway during the Famine, but who now occupies, as he well
deserves to do, a high position in the Irish Church, has kindly supplied
the author with some of his famine experiences. There are five
churchyards in the parish where he then ministered. Four of these had to
be enlarged by one half during the famine, and the fifth, an entirely
new one, became also necessary, that there might be ground enough
wherein to inter the famine-slain people. This enlargement of burial
accommodation took place, as a rule throughout the South, West, and
North-west. One day as this priest was going to attend his sick
calls--and there was no end of sick calls in those times--he met a man
with a donkey and cart. On the cart there were three coffins,
containing the mortal remains of his wife and his two children. He was
alone--no funeral, no human creature near him. When he arrived at the
place of interment, he was so weakened by starvation himself, that he
was unable to put a little covering of clay upon the coffins to protect
them.
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