An Gorta Mór is the Great Famine, or the Great Hunger among those who point out that there was plenty of food in Ireland in the late 1840s, just not made available to peasants. Of a population around eight million, a million people died and a million more emigrated.
“They buried us without shroud or coffin” is a line from an unrelated Seamus Heaney poem Requiem For The Croppies.
The mural comprises three images from Illustrated London News: (left) Bridget O’Donnel And Children (ILN) and (right) Funeral At Skibbereen (ILN).
Ardoyne Avenue, north Belfast
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Copyright © 1997 Paddy Duffy
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Paddy Duffy Collection 