The Hungry Grass

‘Hungry Grass’ is a expression used in Ireland to refer to cursed patches of grass which cause anyone standing on them to feel near dead with the hunger.   In Irish, the term used to refer to such land is ‘An Fear Gortha’ or ‘Hungry Man’, reflecting the tradition that the hunger pangs are caused by some sort of supernatural force below ground, possibly even the corpse of someone who previously died of starvation in that very place.

The Hungry Grass legend has been present in Irish mythology for centuries, but it was only after the deaths of a million people in the Great Famine of 1844-49 that it really took root.  For the rest of the 19th century, no one would travel by foot throughout Ireland without some oatcakes in their pockets (oatcakes being the only thing that would release the grip of the Fear Gortha).   The tradition seems to have died out now but there are still patches of hungry grass here and there and I was shown one in County Kilkenny not so long ago.

The Famine didn’t just increase the amount of hungry grass; the relief works commenced in an attempt to alleviate the misery of the starving also changed the topography of the country in a different way. The idea behind these works sounded great in theory – people who want food, should be prepared to work for it, improving the public infrastructure at the same time.

In practice, however, the schemes were less than ideal.  Not only did they ignore the obvious fact that people already starving weren’t going to be in a fit condition to do heavy manual labour (see below), but many of the projects carried out were daft entirely, including, among other things, roads going nowhere, canals that were never filled with water, and ‘follies’ consisting of castles, towers and in one case, a pyramid.

Here’s a slideshow:-

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As you can see, some of these works are quite pretty but the land in their vicinity is reputedly riddled with patches of hungry grass, not surprising given the very high death rate among the workers.

The roads going nowhere (otherwise known as ‘the Green Roads’) are still there all over the west of Ireland and you can see some pictures of them in the slideshow as well.   They inspired a great poem by Eavan Boland called ‘The Famine Road’, which I won’t put up here because I find it too sad.  If you really want to read it you can link to it at poemhunter.com here.

The painting at the top of the post is by Vincent van Gogh and if you were looking at it in a gallery all you would see would be a field of grass.  When x-ray technology was applied to it, another painting of a person appeared underneath and this story of the painting and the face coming out from under the grass reminded me of An Fear Gortha and the Famine and gave me the idea for this post.

I am so sorry if this post is depressing.  For some reason I always write my depressing posts when in a good mood and my cheerful posts when depressed.   I will try to find something more cheerful to put up but probably best not on this post as the Famine is not something to joke about (I lost collateral relatives, not to starvation but to something else – long story too painful to discuss but with a touch of the Sawney Beans).

For my international readers (all three of them), here’s a video giving you the background to what we here call ‘The Famine’ (to distinguish it from all the other, lesser famines) – very good but maybe best listened to with the sound down low as the music is a bit screechy.

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