In the Famine Days

transcribed at

In the Famine Days  [duchas:4974122]

Some of the people of Gravelstown suffered terribly during the Famine. They were known to have eaten haws, boiled nettles and all kinds of weeds. Men and women and little children were often seen at early morning out eating the raw turnips and mangolds in the fields. There wasn't a bird to be found anywhere; the starving

In the Famine Days  [duchas:4974123]

people had killed them all and eaten them. People were to be found lying dead in twos and threes in the houses and often by the roadsides while funerals were always passing by.

It was during that dreadful time that  Spandaw hospital  was built. The ruins may still be seen in a little piece from the road leading from Kells to Ardee, about half-a-mile from the chapel of Staholmog. The unfortunate victims of the dread cholera died in hundreds there.

One morning a man named Mike Reilly was bringing corn to the mill in Drogheda and when crossing a bridge a voice reached his ear from underneath the bridge saying: "Thanks be to God, we won't have long to wait now." Then he heard a baby's piteous wailing and the voice said again.  "Hush, hush, alanna,  there's Mike Reilly going to the mill for meal and we'll have plenty to eat to-night." Mike stopped his horse and got down from his cart to see who could be under the bridge so early in the morning. But he could see nobody and in great perlexity he resumed his journey.

That night he was returning home with his cart piled with sacks of meal having completely forgotten the incident of the morning when on crossing the bridge his horse began to rear and plunge. Finally he dashed over to where a portion of the wall was broken down, and almost upset the cart. Mike managed to pacify him after a time but one of the sacks of meal had fallen down into the stream below, which could hardly be called a stream at all for it was almost dried up completely with the terrible drought.

In the Famine Days  [duchas:4974124]

of that month. ( I don't believe a river would dry up altogether in a month but that's the way the story was told to me anyway.) He went down to look for it but the sack was nowhere to be seen and then he remembered the voice he had heard that morning: "Hush, hush, alanna, that's Mike Reilly going to the mill for meal and we'll have plenty to eat to-night." He said nothing except. "Tis the good people, not wan else, Glory be to God an' may He protect us all this night", and climbing into his cart he set off for home once more.