occurred at Castle Matrix when Raleigh turned them over to Lord Southwell. I was not due to travel anywhere near Myrtle Grove, but my rhododendron adventurewas going to take me close to Castle Matrix, and so I conveniently chose to believe that this was the site of the potato’s first cultivation in Ireland.
Potatoes grew better than just about any other crop in the stony soils of the Emerald Isle, and soon came to completely dominate the diet of Irish peasants. Potatoes contain little protein, and in centuries past, in order to meet their nutritional needs some folks consumed between four and six kilograms of potatoes each day. Putting this much faith in just one crop is a pretty risky thing. One bad harvest is going to leave you rather hungry. One total crop failure and you and your family are going to starve to death. This is exactly what happened in Ireland in the mid-1840s. A parasitic water mould known as
Phytophthora infestans
causes late blight of potatoes, and in one week in the summer of 1846 the blight destroyed virtually the entire Irish potato crop. Between famine and emigration, the population of Ireland fell from 8.5 million to 6.5 million in just six years.
The community of Adare lies southwest of Limerick, and Rathkeale lies southwest of Adare. If my guidebook was to be trusted, Castle Matrix could be found just southwest of Rathkeale, although I was damned if I could find it or anything that looked, sounded, or tasted like it. I couldn’t find a single helpful sign. I began to wonder if all the signs come down in the off-season, or whether the lack of useful signs was a way to get tourists to stop at convenience stores to ask for directions. I stopped at a convenience store, but when I asked the young fellow behind the counter about Castle Matrix, he just gave me a big shrug. As I reached the door on the way out he called, “Not from around here.” I don’t know if he was referring to me or to himself.
After my failure to find Castle Matrix, I mistakenly trusted my guidebook when it suggested that I might want to travel to Ballingary and from there find the hillside at Knockfierna, site of a well-preserved famine village. Before the famine, Knockfierna was home to 1,000 people. Only 300 remained after. A heritage group had developed a park to commemorate those persons lostto the famine, with restored dwellings of the former residents. But all of this came to nothing for me, because I could find neither evidence of Knockfierna nor anyone to point me in the right direction. On the road to Ballingary, a fellow in a grey Land Cruiser tucked in behind me and tailgated me for the next five kilometres. As we approached the town, I slowed down for schoolchildren, and the Land Cruiser took the opportunity to zoom by me. The driver also took the opportunity to give me the finger.
In a last-ditch effort to find something linked to the potato famine in Ballingary, I headed for the local churchyard. I was hoping to find graves of people who had died in or around 1846. Many of the headstones were too new for persons carried off by the famine, but a few stones had been rubbed nearly smooth by time, hosting a thick crust of lichen. James Reidy had prepared a headstone for his wife, Mary, who died on March 23, 1910, at the age of seventy-four. Hence, Mary would have survived the famine as a young girl.
In three ways, southwest Ireland is like Prince Edward Island on Canada’s east coast. Both spots are populated by people of Irish ancestry. People in both regions are really big on cultivating potatoes. Finally, in both places it is assumed that everyone knows where they are, and knows how to get to where they need to be. If you can find a road sign in southwest Ireland, rest assured that it won’t be helpful. Three roads leading out of Ballingary were signposted to lead to Newcastle West (An Caisleán Nua), my next destination. I took the road with the newest-looking sign. At a crossroad a bit further along, a
Potatoes grew better than just about any other crop in the stony soils of the Emerald Isle, and soon came to completely dominate the diet of Irish peasants. Potatoes contain little protein, and in centuries past, in order to meet their nutritional needs some folks consumed between four and six kilograms of potatoes each day. Putting this much faith in just one crop is a pretty risky thing. One bad harvest is going to leave you rather hungry. One total crop failure and you and your family are going to starve to death. This is exactly what happened in Ireland in the mid-1840s. A parasitic water mould known as
Phytophthora infestans
causes late blight of potatoes, and in one week in the summer of 1846 the blight destroyed virtually the entire Irish potato crop. Between famine and emigration, the population of Ireland fell from 8.5 million to 6.5 million in just six years.
The community of Adare lies southwest of Limerick, and Rathkeale lies southwest of Adare. If my guidebook was to be trusted, Castle Matrix could be found just southwest of Rathkeale, although I was damned if I could find it or anything that looked, sounded, or tasted like it. I couldn’t find a single helpful sign. I began to wonder if all the signs come down in the off-season, or whether the lack of useful signs was a way to get tourists to stop at convenience stores to ask for directions. I stopped at a convenience store, but when I asked the young fellow behind the counter about Castle Matrix, he just gave me a big shrug. As I reached the door on the way out he called, “Not from around here.” I don’t know if he was referring to me or to himself.
After my failure to find Castle Matrix, I mistakenly trusted my guidebook when it suggested that I might want to travel to Ballingary and from there find the hillside at Knockfierna, site of a well-preserved famine village. Before the famine, Knockfierna was home to 1,000 people. Only 300 remained after. A heritage group had developed a park to commemorate those persons lostto the famine, with restored dwellings of the former residents. But all of this came to nothing for me, because I could find neither evidence of Knockfierna nor anyone to point me in the right direction. On the road to Ballingary, a fellow in a grey Land Cruiser tucked in behind me and tailgated me for the next five kilometres. As we approached the town, I slowed down for schoolchildren, and the Land Cruiser took the opportunity to zoom by me. The driver also took the opportunity to give me the finger.
In a last-ditch effort to find something linked to the potato famine in Ballingary, I headed for the local churchyard. I was hoping to find graves of people who had died in or around 1846. Many of the headstones were too new for persons carried off by the famine, but a few stones had been rubbed nearly smooth by time, hosting a thick crust of lichen. James Reidy had prepared a headstone for his wife, Mary, who died on March 23, 1910, at the age of seventy-four. Hence, Mary would have survived the famine as a young girl.
In three ways, southwest Ireland is like Prince Edward Island on Canada’s east coast. Both spots are populated by people of Irish ancestry. People in both regions are really big on cultivating potatoes. Finally, in both places it is assumed that everyone knows where they are, and knows how to get to where they need to be. If you can find a road sign in southwest Ireland, rest assured that it won’t be helpful. Three roads leading out of Ballingary were signposted to lead to Newcastle West (An Caisleán Nua), my next destination. I took the road with the newest-looking sign. At a crossroad a bit further along, a
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