What were alternative foods to the potato during the Great Hunger?
Oats cooked in a pot over the fire and mixed with milk were commonly eaten. When cow's milk was not available, poorer people made oat milk which was called sowans (súcháin as Gaeilge).
As the potato blight spread and food became scarce, hens stopped laying and were killed and eaten. Families who were forced to emigrate sold their animals, many to soup kitchens, with the result that,
Livestock was very much reduced during the famine period.
Turnips were unaffected by the potato blight, and were cooked together with oatmeal. Those who had access to the sea foraged for shellfish. Any and all types of fish were consumed. One man recalls the way flounder (also called fluke) was caught.
Going barefoot into the water where these flatfish were plentiful.
Coastal communities also captured seabirds from cliffs and gathered their eggs during the nesting season.
The group of five rocky islands known as the Stags of Broad Haven off the north Mayo coast were frequented during Famine times, and seafowl brought home from there were eaten out of necessity,
Some were preferable to others as food. Yet all were acceptable and none was rejected.
‘Famine Echoes : Turnips, Blood, Herbs And Fish’ was broadcast on 18 September 1995. The produer is Cathal Póirtéir.
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. It was broadcast in 1995 to mark the 150th anniversary of the Famine.
Producer Cathal Póirtéir combed the manuscript collection of the National Folklore Collection in the Delargy Centre in UCD for material about the Famine. His research provided him with the content for sixteen half-hour programmes in which actors Kevin Reynolds, Mick Lally, Breandán Ó Dúil, Oliver Maguire, Maurice O'Donoghue, Bríd Ní Neachtain and Colette Proctor narrated the accounts of ordinary people, originally collected by the Irish Folklore Commission in the 1940s.
Each programme had a separate theme, and included memories from much of English-speaking Ireland, with the Irish language material in its companion series ‘Glórtha ón Ghorta’.
