In downtown Dublin, on the Liffey River, there is a memorial of bronze statues that pay tribute to those that died in the potatoe famine. I copied some of my pictures just above. It was indeed a painful time in Irish History.
I hear a lot about the famine and how it affected the entire island. Potatoes are a main sustenance here in Ireland. Even today potatoes are served in various forms at most of the meals. Even at breakfast, they do appear.
By the 1800s, the potato had become the staple crop in the poorest regions of Ireland. More than three million Irish peasants subsisted solely on the vegetable which is rich in protein, carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins such as riboflavin, niacin and Vitamin C. It is possible to stay healthy on a diet of potatoes alone. (They obviously hadn’t heard of Peanut M&M’s.)
In 1845 and lasting for 6 years, a blight caused problems with the potato crop. Over a million people died here in Ireland because of the famine. Another million left for better places like America, New Zealand, Australia and the like.
Most left from the seaport of Cork where I will visit the last week in May. There’s a museum at the harbor that focuses in on the famine and those that left from Cork. Before the famine the population of Ireland was over 8 million. For many reasons more than I listed the number dropped to a little over 4 million. Today there are about 6 million people and the country has the best economy in all of Europe. They did export more computer programs than any place in the world but that’s now changing. They attracted many in the computer field which put them back on the map.
In downtown Dublin on the Liffey River there is a memorial of bronze statues that pay tribute to those that died in the famine. I’ll post pictures. It was indeed a painful time in Irish History.
By the 1800s, the potato had become the staple crop in the poorest regions of Ireland. More than three million Irish peasants subsisted solely on the vegetable which is rich in protein, carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins such as riboflavin, niacin and Vitamin C. It is possible to stay healthy on a diet of potatoes alone. (They obviously hadn’t heard of Peanut M&M’s.)
In 1845 and lasting for 6 years, a blight caused problems with the potato crop. Over a million people died here in Ireland because of the famine. Another million left for better places like America, New Zealand, Australia and the like.
Most left from the seaport of Cork where I will visit the last week in May. There’s a museum at the harbor that focuses in on the famine and those that left from Cork. Before the famine the population of Ireland was over 8 million. For many reasons more than I listed the number dropped to a little over 4 million. Today there are about 6 million people and the country has the best economy in all of Europe. They did export more computer programs than any place in the world but that’s now changing. They attracted many in the computer field which put them back on the map.
In downtown Dublin on the Liffey River there is a memorial of bronze statues that pay tribute to those that died in the famine. I’ll post pictures. It was indeed a painful time in Irish History.
There's lots of painful history here in Ireland. More on "The Troubles" later
2 comments:
Wow.....only potatoes? Your right, a little chocolate here and there would be good! Thanks for posting pictures, very interesting stories.
Janet
I'm not even Irish, but it hurts my heart to look at those statues and think about what those people endured.
Post a Comment