Page:Annalsoffaminein00nich.djvu/37

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FAMINE IN IRELAND
31

heard on the streets, and in the market-place, interrogate one another, "And have ye seen the yaller Indian, God save us awl? By dad and 'Peel's brimstone' has come over again, to scrape the maw of every divil on us."

The reader must be content to take the famine just as I saw it; and though the language may be sometimes startling, to refine it by any substitution or seasoning of my own invention would be weakening its force, and oftentimes frittering away the truth. In justice it should be said that they often use the word devil in a quite different meaning from what others do, always applying it to a poor neglected creature, however deserving he may be, as well as to those who are wicked. Thus they would often say, "The breath is cowld in the poor divil's body, he'll no more feel the hunger, God bless him!" And the yaller Indian was called by all manner of epithets, and went through all manner of ordeals but the right one. The Indian meal by some was stirred in cold water with a stick, then put quite dry upon a griddle, it consequently crumbled apart, there was no turning it; and one desponding woman came to me, saying, "That the last bit of turf had died on her, and not a ha'porth of the yaller Indian would stop with its comrade." Others made what they call "stirabout;" this was done, too, by first steeping in cold water, then pouring it into a pot, and immediately after swelling, it became so thick that it could not be stirred, neither would it cook in the least. The "stirabout" then became a "stand-