y, that for want of a few boards to make a
coffin, she remained uninterred for eight days. There is a melancholy
peculiarity in the case of a young lad named Edmond M'Hale. When he had
been a considerable time without food, he became, or seemed to become,
delirious. As his death approached, he said from time to time to his
mother--"Mother, give me three grains of corn." The afflicted woman
regarded this partly as the mental wandering of her raving child, and
partly as a sign of the starvation of which he was dying. She tried to
soothe him with such loving words as mothers only know how to use.
"_Astore_," she would say, "I have no corn yet awhile--wait till
by-and-by;" "Sure if I had all the corn in the world I'd give it to you,
_avour-neen_;" "You'll soon have plenty with the help of God." A
neighbouring woman who was present at the touching scene searched the
poor boy's pockets after he had died, and found in one of them three
grains of corn, no doubt the very three grains for which, in his
delirium, he was calling. Many of the deaths which happened are too
revolting and too horrible to relate; no one could travel any
considerable distance in Mayo at this period without meeting the
famine-stricken dead by the roadside.

Still it would be hard to surpass Skibbereen in the intensity and
variety of its famine horrors. Dr. Donovan, writing on the 2nd of
December, says: Take one day's experience of a dispensary doctor. It is
that of a day no further off than last Saturday--four days ago. He then
proceeds with the diary of that day: his first case was that of Mrs.
Hegarty, who applied to him for a subscription towards burying her
husband and child; the doctor had not prescribed for them, and he asked
why he had not been applied to; the answer was as in other cases--they
had no disease, and he could be of no use to them. His second case was
that of a boy named Sullivan, who came to him for some ointment for his
father. This application was somewhat out of the usual course, ointment
being a peculiarly useless thing as a remedy against famine. There was,
however, need of it. The boy's grandmother had died of fever some days
before, and his father and mother, with whom she had resided, took it
from her. The neighbours were afraid to go into the fever-house, but
some of them, kindly and charitably, left food outside the door, and
candles to wake the corpse. The mother struggled out of bed to get the
candles in order to light the