Here is a story that we were told as
children.
He would knock on your door and as was
the custom, the stranger would always be welcomed and invited in for a bite to
eat. As you know, during the years of famine if food existed at all it was as
scarce as hens teeth so some people would run and hide if they heard a knock on
the door. Some, if they opened the door,
would deny that they had anything in the house at all and some people would
even run the Fir Gorta from the door.
For those who refused help to the Fir
Gorta, there would be no hope for they would perish in the famine. However,
there were those who would have a small piece of potato or a drop of milk, and
even though it might have to do the whole family, the custom was one of
hospitality to the stranger and so it would be offered to him. He would thank them for their generosity,
politely refuse their meagre offerings and take his leave of them.
Before he left them he would say,
“Because of your generosity and your
honest welcome you are truly blessed this day and neither you nor your family
will ever die of the hunger. Tell no one
of this, but from this day forth your pot will never be empty and your jug will
never run dry”.
In the morning the woman of the house
went to the pot and within it she found a great big potato that would feed the
whole of the household and the jug brimming over with fresh milk and every
morning from then on it was the same thing.
They survived the hunger.
We were also told to always carry a
piece of bread in our pocket because sometimes when out walking the boreen’s if
you felt hungry it meant that you were passing a place of famine death and if
you did not eat something straight away then you might waste away and die.
The Hungry Grass was an area of
grassland where someone had died through hunger during the famine. They lay
where they fell as there was no one to give them a decent burial. It is said
that if you were to walk over this area then you too would be stricken with the
hunger. Some may even suggest that it is
a fairy curse so if you’re having a picnic or eating outside for any reason
then sprinkle a few crumbs onto the ground. It will show the fairies that you
are not a mean person, you see when a sign says “Keep off the grass” there may
be a very good reason.
The dead have always played a central
role in rural Irish folklore.
Whether as an insubstantial ghost wandering
through the countryside or a walking corpse returning to torment the living.
Our former ancestors have always
exercised an intense and continuing fascination for those who survive them and
have formed the basis for many hair-raising tales.
The dead, it appears, will not go
away. The belief in returning ghosts,
spirits or corpses may have its origin in primitive ancestor worship. It was well known throughout the country that
the dead had to be looked after at all times.
Not to do so was to invite misfortune upon yourself, your family or your
community. Nor has this belief wholly
died out.
In 1993, there was a man in north Cavan
who claimed that as a child he remembered the corpse of his grandfather coming
back from the grave on some nights during the winter months to sit at the fire
and smoke a pipe of tobacco. He said
that he also remembered actually touching the skin of the corpse and finding it
very cold.
His grandfather never spoke but sat
warming himself by the fire. The rest of
the family ignored this and went off to bed, leaving the corpse sitting in
front of the fire. When they got up in
the morning, the corpse was gone-presumably back to its grave. This story was borne out, without prompting,
by one of the old gentleman’s sisters.
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