Famine Echoes

Famine Echoes is a 16-part series based on the folklore about the great famine of the late 1840s and the memories of it passed on within communities throughout the country.

Producer Cathal Póirtéir combed the manuscript collection of the National Folklore Collection in the Delargey Centre in UCD for material about the famine. The thousands of pages he found provided him with the raw material for 16 half-hour programmes in which actors revised the material, originally collected by the Irish Folklore Commission in the 1940s. He gave each programme a separate theme and included memories from much of English speaking Ireland in Famine Echoes and the Irish language material in its companion series Glóretha ón Ghorta.

The programmes were highly acclaimed when first broadcast in 1995 to mark the 150th anniversary of the famine.

Cathal Póirtéir's book of the series, Famine Echoes, is being republished by Gill and Macmillan to coincide with the repeat broadcast of the series over the next four months.

Listen to the series

Audio links to all the programmes in the series.