The Famine

14 Pages 3504 Words

eir meal. Quite a few different dishes could be made from the potato, such as boxty bread, champ and fleatair. Among the peasant class, married men were clothed better than women and their garments were provided for first. Women had equal say in the economy of the household. Women did the daily work of cooking, cleaning, and raising the children. Women most of all were responsible for the fowl, pig, and making of butter. On market day, better off farming girls and women would drive the horse or donkey to town with products of butter, eggs, and fowl and return in the evening with the wares they purchased. Peasant families ate potatoes for every meal, except during the summer when their stock was exhausted. Most of the beggars were wives and children of able-bodied laborers. The husbands themselves hardly ever begged. In the very poor laboring families, while the husbands went to the east of the country or to England to find work at the harvest, women and children sustained themselves by begging. They would travel away from their parishes for the...