How Emily Survived the Potato Famine
and Came to America
Young Emily McFetridge lived in far-off Ireland near the seacoast where the emerald-colored hills rose and fell and then rose again as far as the eye could see--all the way to the great stone cliffs by the sea. Her village was small and most of its inhabitants scratched a meager living out of the rocky land which surrounded it. But while they were poor, they were rich in friendship and kinship.
The year was 1846. Emily lived with her mother and father and three sisters and at nine, was the youngest. She was tall for her age, and slender. Unlike her sisters who had dark hair like their mother, Emily's was the color of sand, like their father, and hung long and straight, falling past her shoulders. Her eyes were made from the blue of the Irish sea with a wee drop of the sky mixed in to make them gleam.
Next in line was her favorite sister, Colleen, who was ten. Then came Mary Helen, age twelve, and finally the oldest, Diedre. Diedre was fourteen and practically a lady. And while Emily dearly loved all her sisters, it was Colleen who was closest to her heart, probably because the two were closest in age.
In those hard days, it was rare that children had much time for play, their services being needed by
their families to keep body and soul together. But Emily and Colleen always managed to find a
bit of time here and a bit of time there to play. Both were very agile and strong. They both loved
to tumble so off they would go to the rolling green fields which surrounded their tiny farm. They
would run up a hill and then do hand-springs down the other side. They'd summer-sault and do
back flips by the stream and then leap-frog till they were so winded they could barely breathe.
Then they'd fall on their backs in the cool, green grass, faces up to the sun and laugh till their sides
hurt. Soon, they'd fall asleep in each other's arms while the cool breeze from the distant sea
ruffled their hair.
Each Spring their daddy, Shamus, would gather the girls to help him prepare their small field for the potatoes they planted each year. Potatoes were the main staple of poor people in the Ireland of those days.
As young as she was, Emily was expected to work as long and as hard as her sisters getting the crop in the ground. Now Emily, while she was not particularly lazy, was a bit of a dreamer. Without knowing why, she'd be right in the middle of turning up the ground with her spud when she'd just 'go off ' into one of her favorite daydreams. Suddenly, she wasn't a tattered little girl in a worn homespun dress with a ragged, hand-me-down shawl around her shoulders. No. In her dream she was a beautiful young princess in satins with silk brocade. And the object in her hand wasn't an old spud carved from a tree limb, it was a golden staff with a large Celtic cross at the top. In the center of the cross was an emerald of the deepest green you ever saw cut in the shape of a shamrock.
Around her neck hung a strand of pearls so long, it took a week just to count them. Her hair, instead of hanging in strings about her shoulders, was now swept up and back and held in place with combs made of gold and silver. And she was no longer standing in her daddy's potato rows. She was in a fine hall so big that it would hold her whole village and half of the next one.
The walls were painted with scenes of the oceans, and mountains, and green valleys. And the windows went all the way from the floor to the ceiling--a ceiling that was so high overhead it made you dizzy just to look at it.
As Emily stepped into this fine hall walking slowly and majestically, using her golden staff as she did, all the fine people who were there stopped talking and looked at her. As she passed each person, the men gave a little bow and the women a little curtsey. It was obvious that Emily was a person of some consequence.
She looked towards the end of the immense hall. Waiting for her there were rocking horses made of precious teak wood and dolls made of the finest alabaster and porcelain. There were jump ropes of spun gold and jacks made out of rare platinum, balls of the finest ivory and little toy wagons carved from jade imported from India. There were stuffed animals--giraffes, tigers, gorillas, and a hippopotamus with a big grin on his face, all made of cloth so soft that it seemed to be spun from clouds. And all of them had rare blue diamonds for eyes.
In one corner of the cavernous hall were enormous tables spread with more food than you could see in a single glance. Muffins dripping with cow's butter, cakes and pastries from every country in the world, cookies and biscuits with marmalades and jams made from every fruit that grows, plates piled so high with sausages that they seemed to reach the ceiling. Roasted turkeys, pheasants and grouse next to platters of roast pork, lamb and beef. Bowl after bowl of steaming cobs of corn, boiled turnips, rutabagas, (but no potatoes because Emily had eaten virtually nothing but potatoes since she could remember).
And there was a whole table with nothing but candies on it--every kind of candy imaginable to a poor girl of nine--hard candies in the shape of ribbons and bows, small round candies, large stick candies, chocolates and caramels, sugar spun like big balls of cotton, taffy pulled as long as her arm, candies such as Emily had only heard of but never seen. And a final table was lavishly heaped with fresh fruits--oranges and apples, pears and persimmons, bananas from unimaginable and mysterious jungles, kiwis and coconuts from Pacific islands that smelled like warm seas, lemons and limes, peaches, quinces, cherries and grapes and plums so fat they looked like they would burst if you touched them.
Emily, her eyes now as big as tea saucers, slowly approached the wonderous things at the end of the hall, the smells of the foods making her dizzy with anticipation. Her tummy was so empty. As she was about to put her hand on one of the fat plums, she heard someone call her name from far off.
"Emily!"
She turned and smiled at the gathering of people in the hall. "Who is it that calls my name?" she asked.
"EMILY!" The voice was closer now. And louder. And a little bit familiar. "EMILY!" yelled her daddy, "stop your day-dreaming and get yourself back to work. Spinning clouds won't get the potatoes planted."
Emily's dream evaporated like dew before the sun. She was back in her father's potato rows, in
her ragged little dress which offered scant protection from the raw wind coming off the sea
several miles away. She shivered a bit and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. Picking
up the old spud which until a moment ago had been her golden staff, she began tearing holes in
the rows to receive the seed potatoes. She thought to herself, I'll have all that one day--nice
clothes and good food. By Padraig himself, patron of Ireland, I'll have it. Emily was a very
determined young girl.
And she might have, too. But that was before the potato blight came, destroying most of Ireland's potato crop that year and plunging many families like Emily's into hopeless starvation.
The poor people of Ireland were no strangers to hunger. You see, the potatoes they harvested in the fall would last no longer than nine months in storage before they rotted. Most families began to run out of last years crop in early summer and would not be able to harvest the new crop of potatoes till early fall. So there were always a few lean and hungry months every summer.
But this year before the crops could be harvested, a blight hit the potato vines and began to kill them before the roots could develop into the nutritious tubers. And come harvest time that fall, Emily's family was no better off than most.
Day after day, Emily and her sisters dug in the earth trying to find potatoes that had not gone bad. But there were very, very few of them. Winter would be bleak that year for there were no other crops planted by the poor Irish. And why not? Potatoes were cheap and highly nutritious. If their diet was supplemented with a little milk from their cow, a family could live a good and healthy life. It may sound strange to people of today--having only one dish morning, noon and night: boiled potatoes, roasted potatoes, fried potatoes, potato soup and for a real treat, 'Bubble and Squeak'--potatoes fried with a little cabbage (when there were a few pennies to buy a cabbage)--but to the poor of Ireland in those days, it was all they knew.
As the autumn days shortened into winter, hunger spread in Emily's house like smoke around a fire. Soon it enveloped everyone and everything. Colleen and Diedre were the first to get sick--very sick and weak. Emily, being the youngest, would get a tiny, very tiny, extra portion of what few potatoes there were. But being a kind and generous soul, she'd cut the extra bit of potato into two pieces and give one each to Colleen and Diedre, praying to God that it would give them the strength to get better.
She didn't dream her dream of the big hall with sumptuous tables of food so much anymore. Her father was right--day-dreaming didn't plant potatoes. Spinning clouds was just spinning clouds. And the hunger that vexed her stomach constantly was louder than anything her brain could come up with most of the time.
Emily's dad went to the landlords, trying to find some work and make a few pennies. But the landlords were English and didn't care much for the Irish anyway. "What's a few Irish more or less," they'd say. When he'd had no luck with the landlords, he tried the workhouses in vain hope of finding some employment. But the workhouses were full, there being so many poor in Ireland and with no potato crop that year, so many starving poor.
Sadly, people soon began to die from starvation. And death didn't pass Emily's house by that dark and terrible winter of the potato famine. On New Year's day, her beloved sister Colleen died from starvation. Emily's dad was inconsolable and her mother cried for days, going each morning to the church to light a candle for Colleen.
Emily was devastated. She never knew she could be so sad. Or so angry. Why, she thought one night, why would God do this to my family? Why would He do this to the family of my friends? Starvation, sickness and even death had touched most of the families in her small village. Emily prayed, Dear God. Why have you done this? Why have you visited this famine on us? Why have you taken my dear Colleen for your own? You have the whole world. You could take anyone you want. Why couldn't you have left Colleen for me so we could grow up and grow old together? I don't mean to be angry with you, dear God, but it just isn't fair. Couldn't you send Colleen back to us? Please.
And as she did every night in the two weeks since Colleen passed, Emily cried herself to sleep.
A bit later, in the early hours of the morning, Emily felt a hand gently shake her shoulder bringing her up from the depths of sleep to groggy wakefulness. She thought at first it was one of her sisters, or her mother. But it wasn't any of them. It was a girl about her own age sitting on the side of the little straw mattress Emily called a bed.
Emily had to blink three times before she realized this was no ordinary girl--no girl from the village she knew, no girl she had ever seen before. She was not of this mortal world, Emily was sure of that.
Scared, Emily shrank back to her mattress, pulling the thin, ragged blanket up to her chin. As cold as it was, this girl wore only the most sheer wisp of a short, pale green tunic with a slender rope of gold tied around the waist. Her unkempt hair was the color of wheat and her eyes the deepest, darkest blue Emily had ever seen--it made her think of the sea when she looked into them. From the girl's back grew large wings that extend two feet above her head and dragged the floor beneath her feet. They were not feathered like a bird's wing. No. They were made of what seemed to be the finest gossamer so delicately thin that Emily could see through them. The surface of the wings shown with a luster as vibrant as if they'd been woven from a hundred rainbows.
'Wh-Who are you?" Emily asked, her voice tiny and hoarse.
"I am Tea Rose, of the little people," replied the girl, her wings slowly undulating behind her.
"But you're so big--same size as me," said Emily. "How can you be of the little people?"
Suddenly Emily heard what sounded like tiny bells tinkling from far off and with a small popping noise, the girl Tea Rose became no bigger than Emily's hand.
"Is that better?" asked the now tiny creature.
"Oooo," cried Emily, shrinking even further into her bed, "you are a faerie. Mary and Joseph protect me! You're not here to bring me the faerie stroke, are you?" (People in old Ireland believed faeries caused strokes in the brain of humans when they were angry with them.)
Tea Rose, her beating wings humming softly, flew up towards Emily's face, landing just below her chin.
"No, that I'm not, Emily for you see I am a faerie of the primrose and cowslips. I was born among the harebells and live in the mushroom ring just outside your house. I mean you no harm. Only faeries from the bluebell woods bring you harm.
"I know," said Emily. "I never go where I see bluebells growing. But why are you here? What do you want?"
"You must get your family out of Ireland, Emily. There are hard and dangerous years ahead."
"But where would we go?" cried Emily. "My dad has no money. We've no where to go nor any means to get there if we did."
"I am here to help you with that, Emily. Your dad has a cousin who lives in American, in New Orleans. You and your family must take a boat and join him. But you must be brave and have faith to find the means to leave."
"What do you mean?" asked Emily.
"This spring, when the primroses are blooming, you must find the stone in the middle of the mushroom ring. But before you do, you must pick and make a poesy of primroses. Then you tap the rock three times with the poesy and all the faerie gold and riches will be yours."
"That sounds easy enough," said Emily.
"Hold on a minute, my love," said the faerie rising to her feet. She moved around Emily's cheek until she could look her into the eye. "It won't be quite that easy. You see you must pick exactly the correct number of primroses for your poesy. If you do, all the faerie wealth is yours. If you pick one more or one less than the correct number and strike the rock, the door to doom will be opened and you will be drawn down into perdition."
"But how will I know which number is correct?" she asked Tea Rose.
"I cannot tell you that. You must discover it on your own. If you can catch a faerie, she'll tell you. Or you must guess."
Suddenly, Emily darted her hand out from under the blanket, swiping at Tea Rose in a vain attempt to catch her. But Tea Rose, anticipating what Emily would do, darted to the ceiling, quick as a flash.
"You'll not catch me, Emily McFetridge. You must find another faerie, or guess the correct number of primroses."
Emily sat up in bed and stared at the tiny creature hovering near the ceiling, her wings humming like a hive of bees. "But, Tea Rose. My family has very little food. Already we're starving. There are only about thirty potatoes left. How am I to live until Spring to try and find your gold?"
"God will help you there. Every time you take a potato from your cellar, when you return the next day, it will be there again. It won't be much but it will keep you and your family alive till Spring. And now I must say good-bye. Remember Emily, chose the correct number of primroses for your poesy or all will be lost." And with a sound like a log crackling in the fireplace, Tea Rose was gone.
Emily laid her head back against the pillow made of old potato sacks. How will I ever know the
correct number of primroses? Surely I will perish and cause my family to perish, too. May
Mary, the Mother of God, help me, she prayed.
It was as Tea Rose had said. Each day Emily or one of her sisters went to the root cellar and collected ten potatoes for the day's meals. The next morning when one of them returned, the potatoes taken the day before had reappeared. Everyone in the family was amazed but her father had come up with an explanation. He believed some good soul from the village who had a large supply of potatoes was sneaking in at night and adding to the family's store. Of course, Emily knew the truth but would tell no one.
Some nights, Emily would lay awake till the early morning hours praying for the knowledge of the
primroses. How many should she pick? Ten? Twenty? Three? She knew if she picked wrongly,
her family would perish from the famine and she, herself, would be left to whatever horrible fate
the faeries had in mind for her. Fifteen? Nine? How would she ever know?