s in the
district of Managharrow alone, awaiting him! One of the cases, that of
Owen Mulrooney, was a moving one. He was a young, muscular man, in the
prime of life. He had a wife and five young children. Here is the
substance of his wife's depositions at the inquest held upon his
remains. She sold all her little furniture for ten shillings, and with
this sum she and her five children left home to make her way to England,
as she thought her husband would be able to support himself, if
unencumbered by her and the family. The weather became cold and rainy;
and when she had got as far as Enniskillen, the children took cramps,
and she had to retrace her steps by slow degrees, and seek again her
desolate home. Meantime, the public works, upon which her husband had
been employed, were stopped, and he was at once reduced to starvation. A
neighbour gave him one meal of food and a night's lodging. He was
revived by the food, and had strength enough to make up two loads of
turf, which he sold, and bought an ass, which he killed, and tried to
cook and eat. He partook of some portion of the ass's flesh twice or
thrice, but his stomach refused the food, as it always brought on great
retching. When his wife and children returned he was dying, and she was
only in time to see him, and give the above sorrowful evidence. We
select this case, said the local journal, out of dozens; because it has
some remarkable features in it. Many, it further adds, who were sent to
purchase food, died of starvation on the journey. The family of Mary
Costello were in a state of starvation for three weeks, and she herself
had not had food for two days. Previous to her death, one of her
brothers procured the price of half-a-stone of meal, for which she was
sent to town; and on the following morning she was found dead by the
roadside, with the little bag of meal grasped tightly in her hand.

Although it is notorious that some districts in the South, especially
Skibbereen, were the first to attract a large share of public attention,
the county Mayo, so populous, so large, so poor, was from the beginning
marked out for suffering; but it lacked an organ so faithful and
eloquent as the _Southern Reporter_, through whose columns Skibbereen
and Bantry and Skull became as well known to the Empire as Dublin,
Paris, or London. Poor Mayo suffered intensely from end to end, although
it suffered in comparative silence. In the beginning of January, what
may be termed a m