I just checked out the link to the other "Famine" thread and Lord! I hope I haven't re-opened THAT can of worms!
What a load of political/etymological bullsh*t.

I am NOT resurrecting that thread here. Bottom line the famine occurred. There were MANY factors - the primary one being the failure over years of the potato crops due to blight which created fatal shortages in the staple food of the farming / rural / worker classes exascerbated by other political factors.

DON'T CARE about what you want to call that (it's NOT a famine because. . . . . frogsh*t!) - the reality is the population of Ireland HALVED in those years and reports of bodies lying by the side of the road in their dozens between villages where people walking from one place to another to find work / sustenance died "in their tracks" are too numerous and credible to be ignored or split hairs over here in the comfort of the 21st Century.

Let's just acknowledge that due to circumstance, oppression, carelessness (not on the part of those who suffered and died), and politics TOO MANY FOLK PERISHED.

On that note a big thankyou to those who responded - you have set my feet on a desired path.

Mutt