bers of
the family, sharing their straw bed and their scanty covering.

At a meeting of the Killarney Relief Committee, the Earl of Kenmare
being in the chair, the parish priest, the Rev. B. O'Connor, made a
statement, which, except as an illustration of the unprecedented misery
to which the people had sunk, I would hesitate to reproduce. He said: "A
man employed on the public works became sick. His wife had an infant at
her breast. His son, who was fifteen years of age, was put in his place
upon the works. The infant at the mother's breast," said the rev.
gentleman, amid the sensation of the meeting, "_had to be removed_, in
order that this boy might receive sustenance from his mother, to enable
him to remain at work." Another poor woman, the mother of eight
children, when dying of want, was attended by the Rev. Mr. O'Connor. She
made her last request to him in these words: "O Father O'Connor, won't
you interfere to have my husband get work, before the children die."

"In December, 1846, matters seemed to have come to a climax, and on the
evening of the 24th [Christmas Eve] I witnessed a scene which scarcely
admits of description. On that day a board was held at the Workhouse,
for the admittance of paupers. The claims of the applicants were, in
many cases, inquired into, but after some time the applicants became so
numerous, that any attempt to investigate the different cases was quite
useless, and an order was then given by the members of the Board
present, to admit all paupers, and at least to give them shelter, as but
little food was to be had. I shall never forget the scene which I that
night witnessed: mothers striving, by the heat of their own persons, to
preserve the lives of their little ones; women stretching out their
fleshless arms, imploring for food and shelter; old men tottering to the
destination where they were to receive shelter. The odour from the
clothes and persons of those poor people was dreadfully offensive, and
the absence of active complaints clearly showed that in many the hope of
restoration was not to be expected. On my visiting this scene next
morning, eleven human beings were dead."[191]

Some twenty years after the famine-scourge had passed away, and over two
millions of the Irish people with it, I visited Skibbereen. Approaching
the town from the Cork side, it looks rather an important place. It is
the seat of the Catholic bishop of Ross, and attention is immediately
arrested by a grou