The Curse of the Potato Blight....

The Tale of Dan O’Hara….

Daniel Ignatius O’Hara was born in Connemara in 1816 and was settled in the family smallholding not far from the village of Clifden. He, being the eldest son, took over the tenancy of the on the death of his father. As the land was not capable of providing enough food for more than one family, his two younger brothers and one sister had to leave home at the age of 16 and make their own way in the world.   The boys had sailed off to America and his sister to London where she went into domestic service.

Dan had married and had eight children by the time he was 26. Times were good and the harvest of 1844 was one of the finest he had ever known. There was ample food put away for the winter, the rent was fully paid up and they had managed to buy some new furniture for their little home. However, it was the calm before the storm.....

He had built a small extension to the cottage now that the girls were growing up fast and they decided to put in some larger windows at the same time. Little did they know that this ‘improvement’ allowed the landlord to increase his rent.  Something which Dan did not fully understand about the new government ‘window tax’ was mentioned.  Still, they had saved some money and there appeared to be no problem. That was until the spring of 1846..............

The previous winter had been a truly wet one with the ground waterlogged well into the end of March. Digging the potato field was out of the question. He ended up planting the ‘spuds’ the second week in April and even then old Dan was not sure whether it was wise or not.

April was a fairly good month but the rains came down again in May, once again making the soil unmanageable. It was the second week in May that he and his neighbours began to smell the horrible stench of rotting vegetation. They recognised it from past years but this was worse than anything they had come across before. The cursed ‘Blight’ had come back to haunt them.

The year of 1846 was a sad one. With the main crop of potatoes rotting in the ground, food was scarce. Mushrooms, wild fruit and an occasional rabbit managed to see them through the early winter months, but the New Year saw them in dire straits. Because they had little or no feed for the few chickens they owned, Dan was forced to kill them for food. They had to break into what little savings they had to see them through to the spring of 1847.

The price of seed potatoes throughout the province (because of the shortage and the necessity to import them) had increased eight fold in twelve months but if things were to improve they had to be bought. Dan went ‘cap-in-hand’ to the landlord’s agent and asked for time to pay the rent. Without any discussion whatsoever, he was told that if the rent was not paid up-to-date by the end of April, they were ‘out on the side of the road’.

Dan and his wife panicked and in order to meet the due date, they sold the ‘new’ pieces of furniture that were merely a year or two old. The money they received barely covered the outstanding rent. The future looked bleaker as the weeks passed.

In April the stench of rotting vegetation returned warning of yet another ‘blight’ to the potato crop. Dan knew that they would not be able to survive another year so he and his wife began to make plans.

They sold everything they possessed at the June market and began the ‘Corsa Fada’ – the ‘long walk’, to the southern port of Cork. They intended to emigrate to America. They had managed to beg, steal and borrow the necessary fares but they had no means of buying any food for the journey. They lived off what could be gathered from the hedgerows on their long journey south.

At communal campfires on the journey – tens of thousands of others were also making the journey – Dan would extol the virtues of his ‘little bit of Ireland’ he was leaving behind.

When they were about fifty miles from the port of Cobh, County Cork, the youngest daughter died one night in Dan’s arms. She had been poorly for days and would not eat anything. They laid her to rest in the corner of a churchyard without even the prayers of a priest above her little grave. Dan’s wife Mary was shocked into silence and Dan noticed that she and some of the other young ones were also looking ill.

On 4^th August 1847 the family, Dan his wife and now seven children boarded the sailing ship ‘Orion’ and the following day their journey began. The ship was packed with almost a thousand similar starving people.   The food they were served, if you could call it food or in fact served, did little more than keep them alive.

On the tenth day Dan’s wife Mary and three of the children were running a high fever and nothing Dan could do seemed to help. Two days later all four died and were casually slipped overboard into the sea by two members of the crew. Dan was the only one to say a prayer. The crew members seemed to be used to it happening.....

Upon arrival at the Reception Area in New York, the remaining four children and Dan landed on American soil. Immediately when examined by the doctor, the children were taken into quarantine with suspected Scarlet Fever. Dan was not allowed to remain with them. He was told that he could wait outside the hospital gates until their release in possibly a month’s time.

The truth of the matter is that Dan O’Hara stood outside those gates for the best part of five months waiting to hear of his children. He stood there in sunshine, rain, snow and storm but would not leave. Everyone he tried to speak to was ‘too busy’ to give him any attention. So there he stood – selling his boxes of matches.

He became well known to some of the locals who would supply him with a little food now and then but the pressure, not to mention the heartache soon took a toll on him. He was found dead one February morning frozen to death in the sub-zero temperatures still clutching his two boxes of matches.

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There is a version of the song by me attached below....

Dan O’Hara..

Sure it's poor I am today 
For God gave and took away 
And He left without a home poor Dan O'Hara 
With these matches in my hand 
In the frost and snow I stand 
So it's here I am today your broken hearted 

Refrain

Achusla geal mo chroi^*, Won't you buy a box from me
And you'll have the prayers of Dan from Connemara
I'll sell them cheap and low, buy a box before you go
From the broken hearted farmer Dan O'Hara

In the year of sixty-four 
I had acres by the score 
‘Twas the finest land you ever ran a plough through 
But the landlord came you know 
And he laid our home low 
So it's here I am today your broken hearted 

For twenty years or more 
Did misfortune cross our door 
My poor old wife and I were sadly parted 
We were scattered far and wide 
Our poor children starved and died 
So it's here I am today your broken hearted 

Though in frost and snow I stand 
Sure the shadow of God's hand 
It lies warm about the brow of Dan O'Hara 
And soon with God above 
I will meet the ones I love 
And I'll find the joys I lost in Connemara…

Achuisla geal mo chroi':    Gaelic:  'Dear brightness of my heart'

-------Mike------