Well hey Kute, its been awhile since you had occasion to denigrate me personally
The difference between "history" and popular myth is often most obvious in the sort of commentary where the writer NEVER gives sources for his questionable assertions.
Oh, you musta forgot about that whole Gwynn Jones "Vikings" thing
(never mind, just gratuitously yanking yer chain there
)
I speak the truth, tho its been a bit since I read up on the famine. But folks can make their own conclusions as to my veracity.
With respect to the other catastrophies you mentioned; people died is all, just as they did with the famine. The Irish situation was unique tho. An Irish population approximately twice what it is even today, fed by a single crop, suddenly taken away.
To put things in context I'd be interested in Irish survival stories. This weren't no American Indian extinction event, even AFTER the famine Irish Catholics were still easily the majority in Ireland. How did all those croppies survive?
Also, look at how England and most everybody else, treated their OWN poor. For mass starvation resulting from direct government policy look to the enclosures acts, where droves of poor folks were kicked off all means of sustenance. Specific to the Famine, I dunno what the level of actual starvation in London slums was in that era, but by modern standards it was certainly appalling in a time and place where young girls routinely turned to prostitution for mere survival and infants were abandoned in the streets.
I stand by my assertion regarding the degree of British charity efforts during the famine, I'm far from home just now, but folks interested can look it up for themselves. I myself read up on it long before the internet era.
As for "family legends", we don't got any that go clear back to the 1840's tho we're still on parish ledgers back in County Cork, my forebearers didn't leave Ireland until after 1900. My grandfather's wandering brother fell at Gallipoli, after being Mentioned in Dispatches to Whitehall. My great-grandfather on the other side served with the Anzacs, and was wounded in action at Beersheeba. In the second go-round my other grandfather, to old to enlist, was a fireman in the Blitz. My one uncle survived Guadalcanal, the other survived Iwo Jima, and my father set foot on Okinawa a private in the 6th Marines but stepped off it as the youngest Staff Sergeant in the USMC at the time.
Me, I was in the Peace Corps
Birdwatcher
