Coming on the harvest time of the year 1845, the crops looked splendid. But one fine morning in July there was a cry around that some blight had struck the potato stalks. The leaves had been blighted, and from being green, parts of them were turned black and brown, and when these parts were felt between the fingers they’d crumble into ashes. The air was laden with a sickly odor of decay, as if the hand of Death had stricken the potato field, and that everything growing in it was rotting. This is the recollection that remains in my mind of what I felt in our marsh field that morning, when I went with my father and mother to see it.

The stalks withered away day by day. Yet the potatoes had grown to a fairly large size. But the seed of decay and death had been planted in them too. They were dug and put into a pit in the field. By and by an alarming rumor ran through the country that the potatoes were rotting in the pits. Our pit was opened, and there, sure enough, were some of the biggest of the potatoes half rotten. The ones that were not touched with the rot were separated from the rotting ones, and were carted into the “chamber” house, back of our dwelling house. That chamber house had been specially prepared for them, the walls of it being padded with straw, but it was soon found that the potatoes were rotting in the chamber too. Then all hands were set to work to make another picking; the potatoes that were rotting were thrown into the back yard, and those that were whole and appeared sound were taken up into the loft over our kitchen. The loft had been specially propped to bear the extra weight. But the potatoes rotted in the loft also, and before many weeks the blight had eaten up the supply that was to last the family for the whole year.

Then one of our fields had a crop of wheat, and when that wheat was reaped and stacked, the landlord put “keepers” on it, and on all that we had, and these keepers remained in the house till the wheat was threshed and bagged, and taken to the mill. I well remember one of the keepers (Mickeleen O’Brien) going with my mother to Lloyd’s mill, just across the road from the marsh field, and from the mill to the agent, who was in town at Cain Mahony’s that day, to receive rents.

When my mother came home she came without any money. The rent was £18 a year. The wheat was thirty shillings a bag; there were twelve bags and a few stone, that came in all to £18 5s., and she gave all to the agent.

I don’t know how my father felt; I don’t know how my mother felt; I don’t know how I felt. There were four children of us there. The potato crop was gone; the wheat crop was gone. How am I to tell the rest of my story!

Volume upon volume has been written and printed about those “bad times” of ’45, ’46 and ’47. I could write a volume myself on them, but as it is not that work I am at, I have only to write down those impressions made on my mind by the incidents I witnessed and experienced—incidents and experiences that no doubt have done much to fortify me and keep me straight in the rugged life that I have traveled since.

I told how our potato crop went to rot in 1845. Some Irishmen say that that was a “visitation of Providence.” I won’t call it any such thing. I don’t want to charge the Creator of the Irish people with any such work.

I told how our wheat crop in 1845 went lost to us also. That, no doubt, was a visitation of English landlordism—as great a curse to Ireland as if it was the arch-fiend himself had the government of the country.

During those three years in Ireland, ’45, ’46 and ’47, the potato crops failed, but the other crops grew well, and, as in the case of my people in ’45, the landlords came in on the people everywhere and seized the grain crops for the rent—not caring much what became of those whose labor and sweat produced those crops. The people died of starvation, by thousands. The English press and the English people rejoiced that the Irish were at last conquered; that God at last was fighting strongly at the side of the English.