Potatoes and Ireland have a unique symbiotic, conceptually inseparable relationship. The potato made Ireland the home of millions, then scattered its population across the globe. Ireland made the potato the infamous vegetable of poverty and oppression, then famine. The potato allowed the Irish to survive and thrive, but their near total dependence on only one kind of food nearly destroyed the people when this crop failed. How did the potato become such an important part of Irish life? What events led to the near total Irish dependence on the potato and the devastating effect of crop failures? This section explores how the politics of English oppression and Irish poverty affected the agriculture and diet of the Irish people. Much of the information in this section comes from the acknowledged king of potato scholarship Radcliffe Salaman and his book The History and Social Influence of the Potato, and Theodora FitzGibbon, author of Irish Traditional Food.
Before the potato the Irish ate oats, barley, dairy products, eggs, meat, and some beans and peas. On rivers and coasts, fish added important nutrients to the Irish diet, and wild honey was always a treat. In times of hardship people would gather nettles and shamrocks in the countryside for soup. People bartered mainly cows for goods and wealthy farmers kept huge herds of cattle as a sign of their wealth. Agriculture was primitive. Farmers used only wooden plows, burned the chaff and winnowed the grain. Before the potato came into prominence, rolled oats formed into cakes were an important part of everyday Irish fare. They cooked them on a broad flat stone, then set them to harden on a three-legged stand called a ‘hardening’ or ‘harnen’ stand. They taste nutty and mine turned out a bit dry, so a big glass of cold milk really hit the spot.
Oatcakes
(adapted from Irish Traditional Food)
1 cup medium oatmeal, plus a little more
1/2 cup flour
1 teas. salt
1teas. baking powder
1/4 cup water
2 heaped tablespoons butter
In a large bowl, mix together oatmeal, flour, salt, and baking powder. Make a well in the dry ingredients. In a small pan, heat the water, add the butter and bring to a boil. Quickly pour the liquid mix into the dry ingredients, and work together rapidly using your hands. Knead lightly for a few minutes, adding a little more water if necessary to keep the dough together. The dough will be very stiff. Sprinkle a surface with more oatmeal, as well as the dough and roll or pat out the dough to about a quarter inch thickness. Cut into three-inch cakes. Cook on both sides in a dry, heated griddle, or bake on a lightly greased baking tray at 350* for about 25 minutes, until they turn a pale golden color. Eat with cheese, butter, honey or jam. Makes about 16.
Soup was an easy and common dish for Irish peasants. They would cook it in a large iron cauldron over the fire. The Irish made soup from sorrel and fresh spring nettles. This sorrel soup incorporates gathered wild greens which served as an essential part of Irish food sources when crops were poor. Here you can replace the sorrel with spinach. Or you can gather sorrel in the woods here in the Pacific Northwest. Look in wet, shady places any time of year. It grows on single stalks with heart-shaped leaves.
Sorrel Soup
(adapted from Irish Traditional Food)
1 lb. sorrel or 1 bunch spinach
6 Tbs. butter
1 large onion, chopped
2 Tbs. flour
4 1/2 pints stock
2 Tbs. breadcrumbs
salt and pepper
2 egg yolks
1/4 pint cream
Wash and chop the sorrel or spinach. Melt the butter in a large saucepan (or iron cauldron) and suate the sorrel and onion until just softened. Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables, mix, and let cook for about 1 minute. Pour in the stock and bring it to a boil. Add the breadcrumbs, season, and let simmer for about an hour, covered. Beat the egg yolks into the cream. Add a little soup to the eggs and cream to thin it out a bit, then gradually pour the mixture into the soup pot, being careful not to boil the soup. Serves 8.
The exact circumstances of the potato’s arrival in Ireland lie in obscurity. Legend has it that Sir Walter Raleigh brought potatoes from Virginia, and this ties into the myth that potatoes are native to Virginia. However, potatoes were not grown in Virginia at the time Raleigh visited, and Raleigh only went to Ireland once, and then only to take on stores. Radcliffe Salaman suspects the Raleigh myth was begun and perpetuated by Sir Robert Southwell, the grandson of one of Raleigh’s friends who had an estate in Ireland. However, ships in the late sixteenth century did store potatoes for long trips, and a shipwreck could have caused a few seed potatoes to wash up on shore.
However the plant got there, the Irish started growing and eating potatoes in large numbers by the early seventeenth century. In 1623 a city council book reports a special toll on "roots" indicating that they were grown in large enough quantities that the government took notice. These roots were probably potatoes. The potato added substantial amounts of iron, calcium, magnesium, vitamin C and various B vitamins to the Irish diet. The potato fitted easily into the pre-existing methods of food preparation in small peasant households, the cauldron and the griddle. Potato dishes, such as potato cakes, were similar to common dishes made with native ingredients, such as oatcakes. Lots of Irish dishes include boiled potatoes alone or as soup. Theodora FitzGibbon confirms this with a large section on soups in her cookbook. These recipes have much more in common with the dishes of pre-potato Ireland than the spicy stews the Peruvians made. Compare this creamy, bland soup, or the subtly flavored potato-leek soup with the thick, spicy brew of the Incas. Even the boiled potatoes were different. The Irish eat theirs with butter and cheese, while the Incas ate theirs alone, or maybe with peanuts.
Potato Soup
(adapted from Irish Traditional Food)
2 Tbs. butter
2 lb. potatoes, sliced (about 5 medium potatoes)
2 medium-sized onions, sliced
1 quart milk or buttermilk
water to cover
salt and pepper
Heat the butter in a large soup pot, soften the potatoes and onions in it. Pour in the milk or buttermilk and enough water to cover the potatoes and make it soup. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for about an hour, taking care not to boil, until the potatoes are thoroughly cooked and falling apart.
The Irish peasant had very few ways of preserving milk and meat. People would bury barrels of butter in the bogs for months, even years, on end. Even today people occasionally discover barrels of sour butter. It turns green and rancid-tasting, so it isn’t a great delicacy, but it is still edible. Milk would also likely go sour. Using buttermilk in the above recipe simulates that. You could also use 2 teaspoons vinegar per cup of milk to make sour milk.
The Irihs grew leeks and onions in gardens or gathered them wild. Leeks or onions and potatoes make an interesting combination of textures and the tastes are well-complemented, especially in soup.
Potato-Leek Soup
(my own recipe, more or less, simple and delicious)
2 Tbs. butter
1 large leek, sliced
2 lb. potatoes, sliced (about 5 medium potatoes)
water or stock to cover
salt and pepper to taste
Melt the butter in a large saucepan or soup pot. Sauté the leeks until soft. Add the potatoes, stir. Add the water or stock and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for about an hour, or until the potatoes are thoroughly cooked. Season with salt and pepper.
Potato cakes are another way that potatoes fit into preexisting preparation methods. These cakes are made like the oat cakes described above. First the dry ingredients are mixed, then the wet potatoes go in, some milk to make a manageable dough, then spread out and cut into 3-inch rounds. In a modern kitchen they work better if you bake them, but it’s perfectly possible to use a griddle (or griddle-like rock or hardening stand) to cook them. I didn’t particularly like their gray color and pasty texture, but my roommate absolutely loved their comforting blandness paired with mild cheddar cheese. The Peruvians would have never made anything like it.
Potato Cakes
(adapted from Irish Traditional Food)
2 Tbs. butter
1 cup self-rising flour or 1 cup flour plus 2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
3/4 cup freshly mashed cooked potato
3-4 Tbs. milk
Work the butter into the flour with your hands. Add the salt. Mix the potato with the flour and add enough milk to make a soft dough, but not too sticky. Pat the dough out on a floured surface to about 1/2 inch thickness. Cut out 3-inch rounds. Place them on a lightly greased baking tray and bake for 20-30 minutes in a 425* oven until golden. Serve hot, split, with butter.
While the rest of Europe remained leery of any new American foods, the Irish embraced the potato whole-heartedly. The reasons for this include economic and agricultural hardship eased by potato cultivation, as well as the new political leverage a growing Irish population provided.
The potato needs only a one-acre patch of land and three weeks worth of labor to produce enough roots to feed a family. The Irish grew potatoes in fields called lazybeds almost eerily reminiscent of the Incan potato fields. A farmer first spread manure over a strip of land 2 to 6 or 7 feet wide and up to 60 feet long. Cattle and pig manure were readily available from the animals kept on the farm. He plowed the land with a wooden plow and placed the potato seeds or starts in rows. Then on either side of the potato bed the farmer dug trenches and smoothed the dirt on top of the bed. The spade used in these operations is amazingly similar to the tallca of Peru. After this intense three weeks of work the lazy bed could be neglected until the potatoes matured. The peasant family could dig them all up at harvest time for storage in a shed or let the potatoes stay in the ground throughout the fall, winter and spring for secret storage away from trampling war horses. Agriculturally, the method provided good drainage in wet areas and fertilizer both from the manure and the plowed-under grasses. Socially, the lazybed allowed the Irish to pursue other ventures, like smuggling, political rebellion, increasing the population, drinking, and working for the landlord to pay the rent on the tiny patch of land that was the family’s livelihood. It also proved to the English that the Irish were lazy and gave the rulers justification to persecute their subjects even more. The potato aided and enforced the system of land tenure through absentee landlords and high rent, yet allowed the Irish to survive, increase, and fight against it. As landlords increased the rent, the Irish moved onto smaller and smaller pieces of land. As the land available to Irish peasants for cultivation shrunk the more they relied on the space-efficent potato, until many families squeezed into the minimum acre required to grow potatoes for a year.The landlords often charged the most the Irish could possibly afford and sometimes more, leading to degrading levels of poverty, homelessness, and a way of life based soley on shakey potato agriculture.
In the sixteenth century England ruled Ireland harshly. They brutally repressed they Irish by marching armies over grain fields, burning food storage sheds, and slaughtering cattle. The English broke down the ancient Irish social system and used the vacuum to their advantage. Since ancient times, the Irish peasant felt loyalty not to a particular piece of land, but to a particular lord. The lord provided the farmer with protection from other lords and portions of land to farm. The English exploited the system by taking over the land and then renting out small plots to the native Irish. This resembles what happened to the natives of Peru as the Spanish moved in to colonize the area. The Irish that refused were driven into the hills and bogs where seed crops wouldn’t ripen or couldn’t grow. Desperation and oppression quickly broke down any initial suspicion or prejudices the Irish had about potatoes.
Irish peasants and their animals lived in small mud huts, smoky from the open fire used to heat the home and cook the food. These huts could be erected by a group of builders in just two days for very little cost, so it was very easy for a young couple to set up their own home, plant a little potato patch, and start having children. This also made it easy to move when a family couldn’t raise rent, and the landlords evicted them. The adults would sleep on straw, a more well-to-do peasant family might have tables and benches. Both children and animals ate out of the same pot. Peasants produced most of their own food, the only luxuries they needed to buy were salt, tobacco, and cookware. In 1690 Arthur Young took a trip through Ireland and wrote about what he saw there.
"The food is mostly milk and potatoes, their clothing coarse bandrel cloth and linen, both of their own make; a pot of gruel, a griddle wheron to bake their bread, a little salt, snuff, and iron for their ploughs being almost all they trouble their shopkeeper or merchant for. A little hut or cabin to live in is all that the poverty of this sort hope or have ambition for." (quoted in Salaman, 1949, 236)
Despite these degrading conditions and a monotonous diet of milk and potatoes, in general the Irish were a healthy and robust people, free from scurvy and other diseases. Without much tilling or work to do to fulfill their needs, and little work to be had anyway, the Irish turned to drink, usually poteen whiskey. Poteen was usually made from barley and malt, but sometimes from potatoes. They kept all sorts of secret stills in the hills since producing whiskey was a crime.
The Protestant English persecuted the Irish, and still do, for their stubborn adherence to Catholic doctrine, an old quarrel going back before England’s separation from the Catholic Church. Religious differences translated into political oppression and racist discourse. The English considered the Irish savages, uncivilized, uncouth, stupid, and lazy. The Irish behaved like an occupied people. England imposed strict anti-export laws on Ireland, so the people turned to smuggling as way to make money. For instance, the French loved Irish wool, so the Irish set up an illegal export operation on the south coast. They survived through guile and charm; deceit was a virtue, and lawlessness was a form of national defense. The potato came to symbolize all this savage illegality.
From 1640 to 1660 the Irish rebelled against English rule. The English tried to stomp out the rebellion, but by 1660 the Irish had gained some political freedoms, such as their own parliament and the right to export grain and cloth. From 1660 to 1690 the Irish enjoyed a period of comparative prosperity. They invented Irish stew during this time, a mix of large chunks of meat and vegetables. One of the first records of it appears in the writings of a shipwrecked Englishman around 1673.
"We had but one dish for entertainment, and that so crammed with such varieties of God’s creatures that this dish seem’d to me to be the first chapter of Genesis; there was such beef, mutton, goat’s and kid’s flesh, bacon, roots, etc., and all so confounded, that the best palate could not read what he did eat. . . this hodgepodge proceeded from custom more than from curiosity, and this was one point of their husbandry, to boyle all together to save charges." (quoted in Salaman, 1949, 239)
This is one of the first examples of Irish stew. Later, mutton was settled on as the principle meat in Irish stew, though beef stew was also a popular dish. For many people today Irish stew symbolizes the epitome of Irish cooking. This simple stew recipe comes fresh off the internet.
Abie’s Irish Stew
(from SOAR, Searchable Online Archive of Recipes, contributed by Orla Hegarty)
1 lb. lean mutton pieces
1 lb. carrots
1 lb. onions
1 lb. potatoes
salt and pepper
pinch of thyme
Place mutton with thyme in a saucepan and add cold water to cover. Bring slowly to the boil and simmer for one hour. Add onions, potatoes, carrots, peeled and roughly chopped. Season. Continue cooking until vegetables are tender. Adjust seasoning. May be served alone or with cooked green cabbage or sprouts.
Colcannon is another dish invented during this time of comparative freedom. Traditionally, the Irish ate it on Halloween, a fast day in the Catholic church on which no meat could be eaten. Basically, the dish consists of boiled cabbage or kale in mashed potatoes, though one version consists of mashed potatoes with butter and milk surrounding a boiled white cabbage. Theodora FitzGibbon writes that on Halloween people would hide a plain gold ring, a sixpence, a thimble or a button in the colcannon. The person who found the ring would marry in the year, the sixpence predicted wealth, the thimble meant spinsterhood and the button meant bachelorhood.
Colcannon
(adapted from Irish Traditional Food)
1 lb. kale or cabbage
1 lb. potatoes
2 small leeks or green onion tops
1/4 pint milk or cream
pinch of mace
salt and pepper
1/4 cup butter, melted
Strip the stalks from the kale or remove the stump of the cabbage. Cook in boiling salted water until tender, about 20 minutes. Be careful not to overcook it. Drain well. Chop finely. Boil the potatoes for mashing. Meanwhile, chop the leeks or onion tops. Simmer them in milk or cream to cover for about 7 minutes. Drain and mash the potatoes thoroughly. Season. Stir in the cooked leeks or onions and milk or cream. Mix in the chopped kale or cabbage. Add the mace, taste for seasoning. Gently reheat the mixture, then pile on a warmed dish for serving. Make a well in the center and pour in the melted butter.
After 1690 England began retracting many of the gains made in the past thirty years. As the English grip grew tighter, the economy declined and the Irish dependence on potatoes became greater and greater and the proportion of milk and other foods in their diet became smaller and smaller. The conacre system of land tenure spread as the population became more and more nomadic and at the mercy of the English landlords. In the conacre system, a landlord tilled the land, then rented it out to a cottier (tenant) to sow and tend for 11 months. The cottier often paid with labor, valued by the landlord at the lowest price. With this he would pay the rent, then eat the potatoes he tended. The rents for these tiny conacres were often exorbitantly high, so that the cottier could pay for little else besides the land. The cottier family had little luxury and lived at the mercy of the social and political forces. Their lives were unstable and they were not tied to any particular piece of land, just tightly bound to this one root. The poorest families lived on just boiled potatoes, as they didn’t have the money or means for any other sort of food.
Boiled potatoes
(adapted from Irish Traditional Food)
Start new potatoes in boiling, salted water; old potatoes in cold water. Cook them until tender when pierced with a fork, then drain them and cover with a cloth so they cook a little more in their own steam. When the potatoes develop a small crack, which the Irish call ‘laughing potatoes,’ they are ready to serve.
Fisherman’s Potatoes
(adapted from Irish Traditional food)
On a sandy beach, dig a shallow pit, just 2 inches deep. Place the whole potatoes in the pit, then shovel sand on top of them. Build a fire on top of the covered potatoes. In half an hour or so the potatoes will be well cooked.
In 1801, Ireland, one of the poorest countries in Europe, formally united with England, one of the richest countries in the world--supposedly on equal terms. However, the great differences between the two societies, both economic and cultural, meant they could not relate on equal terms and England used the union only to further exploit and oppress the Irish. Ireland saw much poverty and discontent throughout the nineteenth century. The poor relied entirely on the cultivation of the potato. England stifled industry with stiff laws regarding all of the potential enterprises in Ireland--brewing, glass, and cloth production. The government made inquiries into the economic affairs of Ireland and discovered their dismal state, but due to laissez-faire political notions and racism they didn’t really do anything about it (Campbell, 1994). During the Poor Inquiry of 1836 the Widow Kilboy made this testimony:
"I and my four children have often lived on eight stone of potatoes for the whole week; about sixteen stone would be sufficient for us. We very seldom at anytime of the year have milk with our potatoes; we sometimes have salt herring, but we eat them three times dry for once that we have anything with them." (quoted in Campbell, 1994, 20)
Even through all this political strife and social hardship, Ireland’s population exploded between the time of adoption of the potato and 1840. In 1760 the population was approximately 1.5 million, by 1840 the souls on Irish soil numbered nearly 9 million. The population jumped 600 percent in 80 years. A single potato patch could produce calories and nutrients to feed a family, so the same land could suddenly support more people and growing families took advantage of it.
However, Ireland’s over-reliance on one crop always destined the nation for occasional distress and famine. Even before the Great Famine of 1845-1847, there were many smaller, localized famines, increasing as the years advanced and more and more people became steadily more dependent on one crop. From 1750 to 1774 records show five years of distress, and two of famine, while from 1800 to 1824 there were nine years of distress and five of famine. Usually the distress was brought about by diseases like dry rot, curl, mold, or blackleg. Potatoes are one of the most highly suseptible crop plants, and scientists still struggle with the problem today. These diseases would wipe out portions of the crop in localized areas, producing hardship but not outright panic. Encounters with potato diseases led to deliberate cultivation of new varieties in certain areas. However, this didn’t help protect against the devastating potato blight.
In one week late in the growing season of 1845 Phytophthora infestans nearly wiped out the entire Irish crop of potatoes. This quick-acting fungus turned a healthy field of potatoes into a black, stinking mess in barely seven days. One traveler wrote about riding the train past green fields on his way to Dublin, then returning a week later and seeing only dead and blackened fields. The late varieties were completely destroyed. The Irish had to make the early varieties last through the whole winter.
The blight didn’t just hit Ireland, but all of Europe. Holland, the Netherlands, Germany, even Russia experienced the Blight. These countries were not as dependent on the potato, so they could fall back on grain crops, but it meant that they didn’t have any surplus to sell. However, Ireland exported as much grain to England that year as she did any other year. Scandalous, but no one in Ireland could buy it even if they kept it in the country because no one had any cash, and the British landlords weren’t about to give valuale grain away to such an inferior and lazy people as the Irish (Hobhouse, 1985). People hoped the next year’s crops would be better. A rather ineffective relief commission was established that winter to publish a guide which would inform the peasants on how to make the most of their meager stores (Kissane, 1995).
Suggestions to Cottagers in Cooking their Potatoes.
(from the Relief Commission Papers, made December 1, 1845 by Derryluskan)
"Commence with YOUR DISEASED POTATOES, by washing them well, then peel or scrape off the skins, carefully curring out such parts as are discoloured; cut the large Potatoes to the size of the smaller ones, and steep them for a short time in salt and water.
Provide a few cabbage leaves (the white kind is the most suitable;) steep them in cold water, then line the bottom and sides of a common metal or oven pot, with the wet leaves; pack in it, the peeled Potatoes in layers, shaking salt and pepper over each layer until the vessel is nearly full; spread more wet cabbage leaves over them, cover all close down with a lid, and set them on a hot hearth, or a moderate fire, as too hot a fire might be attended with risk.
The object of the above-mentioned method is, that the Potatoes should be cooked through the medium of their own moisture, instead of the usual mode of steaming or boiling them in water.
The following additions may be made by those who can afford to improve upon the above, by introducing sliced Onions, salt Herring, salt Butter, salt Pork, Lard or Bacon cut in slices, or small pieces, or Rice, previously boiled.
It would be found more economical, instead of peeling, to scrape off the skins of such Potatoes as are only slightly discoloured, or altogether free from taint.
Those who have a Cow or Pigs to feed should collect the peelings and rejected portions of the Potatoes, steep them for some time in salt and water, then pack them in a metal pot, in layers, with cabbage leaves, sprinkling salt over each layer, and cook them as above directed; if found necessary, a little Bran or Oatmeal may be added.
[Reprinted in Kissane, 1995]
The next year, 1846, the blight struck again, early. Nearly every potato field in all of Ireland lay in ruin and produced only a few, small potatoes, which often rotted after a few weeks in storage. All the Irish cottiers could do was wring their hands and cry. Terror and desolation ruled the countryside. The peasants had no alternative food source. There were too many people now to fall back on the usual famine foods like nettles and sorrel. Some people thought the Blight was a curse, sent to punish the sins of the people. Everyone went hungry. The lack of food brought on other diseases, including scurvy, dysentery, cholera, ophthalmia, and especially typhus and insanity. By June of 1847 Ireland was in acute distress. Dead bodies lined the roadside and lay abandoned in cabins. People were too weak to bury their own companions. Naked beggars starved in the streets. But still Ireland exported grain. Despite the union, the British government still considered Ireland another country and the famine was a natural population check. They believed laziness was inherent to the character of the Irish and it wouldn’t get better with government handouts.
When the situation became too desperate to ignore, thanks to constant newspaper reports published in London, the government set up workhouses. To qualify for the relief works, the Poor Relief Act of 1847 required peasants to leave the countryside and qualify as "destitute poor" before receiving a crust of bread or an hour of wages. In March of 1847, 734,000 men were employed by the relief works, which meant nearly three million people were dependent on them. They paid their workers a little less than average wage, which meant they were even more poor than usual. But any inefficiency in payroll was met with violence. In the relief works the Irish performed hard labor like building roads. Even though the workhouses were brutal, the demand for work outweighed the capacity. But the starving people found it incredibly hard to do this kind of work, often collapsing on the job. Eventually the British government set up soup kitchens in April, 1847. They served nearly 3 million people that month. The government hired chef M. Soyer to design meals for the soup kitchens.
M. Soyer’s Soup Kitchen Soup
(adapted from The History and Social Influence of the Potato)
4 Tb. dripping fat
1 cup flour
1 Tb. brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped onions
turnip parings
celery tops
4 oz. leg of beef
2 gallons water
Heat the dripping fat in a large soup pot. Add the flour and brown sugar and whisk to thicken the sauce. Soften the onions, turnip parings and celery tops. Add the water and leg of beef. Bring to a boil, then simmer for an hour or until the beef flakes off the bone. Serves 3 million.
Other chefs challenged this recipe as not nourishing enough. They rallied the government, and soon soups were replaced with more solid food, like hot, thick porridge. Soyer later published a cookbook on famine eating in Ireland called Charitable Cooking or The Poor Man’s Regenerator. He said "It requires more science to produce a good dish at trifling expense than a superior one with unlimited means."
The famine killed about two and a half million people from starvation and disease. Another million immigrated to the United States and Canada. Many died in transit from epidemic diseases on the ships or died in quarantine in the New World. Despite the quarantines, epidemics of typhus and dysentery raged through Quebec and Montreal. In their new homes the Irish still lived in abominable conditions, but they were better than in Ireland (Hobhouse, 1985). English landlords supported immigration. Once tenants left they could devote more land to pasture and exportable grain. After the famine, conditions improved in Ireland. Wages increased, industry became a stronger force, and diet varied more with the incorporation of more turnips, carrots and clover. The Society of Friends, who had operated a number of soup kitchens encouraged these different crops through agricultural programs. They also enabled fishermen to regain their footing by providing equipment. The number of small farms declined as less workers worked the land and more land was converted to pasture. But, the potato habit stuck and many Irish still eat potatoes at least once a day.
The memory of hunger has become a potent part of Irish identity, though sometimes hidden. As a child in Ireland, Marie Smyth learned all about gathering wild plants from her mother, a relic of the days when this knowledge was vitally important for survival. In her article "Hedge Nutrition, Hunger and Irish Identity" in Through the Kitchen Window she writes that the famine
"is an unwelcome reminder of how ignoble the Irish struggle for survival has been, how costly and random, and how many people who understood little or nothing of the complexity of its dynamic paid, nontheless, with their lives. Remembrance of the famine rekindles that smoldering doubt we carry internally, ignited by the poisonous racist discourse about ourselves that we witness daily. Perhaps we are ‘savages.’ Perhaps we are cursed--incapable of living happily and creating our own prosperous and independent lives. Perhaps we really are addicted to drink and fighting; perhaps we are inherently inferior; perhaps it was all our own fault after all."
This is the legacy of the potato in Ireland. It created a reason for the English to hate the Irish. It provided fuel for English hatred and accusations of laziness and savagery. The potato enabled the cottier system that made the Irish accept abominable conditions as a way of life for generations. The whole system of oppression was built on potato agriculture. But it also provided a way for the Irish to survive and prosper in the face of horrible oppression. Without the potato the Irish might have been killed off or starved, kept a weak and impotent force. The population would not have grown without the fertile potato, but a growing population led to a dependence on one food crop for survival. The potato created a vicious cycle of growth and need, leading to poverty and vulnerability, both Irish hope and Irish downfall.
