Lysaght

It is important to note Lysaght's use of secondary sources because they help shape her own findings and conclusions; for example Lysaght notes another important observation made by O Grada, that the assessments made at the time regarding morality rates are much lower than in actuality. This is interesting to observe because the number of oral traditions that speak of death is very high. Lysaght suggests that the inaccuracy of recorded deaths could be a result of the Irish population's “reluctance and unwillingness” to admit or acknowledge that the famine was indeed strongly present, and its effects were detrimental to the community1. Being around death all the time would damage a person psychologically; depression and grief would set in one's …show more content…
Bodies that could not be properly buried were either thrown in mass burial graves, or simply tossed in fields, ditches, mill-ponds, rivers, and bogs3. This alone paints a gloomy image of what famine-stricken Ireland looked like. Interestingly, the surviving number of accounts that convey similar imagery by the famine are less common; “Cormac O Grada has further noted that certain aspects of the famine tragedy, such as descriptions of physical deterioration and abnormality from starvation and nutritional deficiency. . . are hardly represented in the oral tradition.”4 It makes sense that those affected directly by the famine would not want to dwell on such things; I would also hypothesize that it was simply not worth mentioning because the sight of a malnourished person was not a startling image since almost everyone was starving. Though very few Irishmen themselves wrote about the physical deterioration of bodies, those who were “outsiders,” as Lysaght calls them, such as William Foster of the Society of Friends, did write …show more content…
The death toll plays a huge a part in this change simply because the morality rate was so high. With so many people dying, jobs became more readily available and many women were forced to play a larger role in the Irish public sphere; women began to work more outside the home because their income became just as valued during the Famine as men's income. Lysaght explains that in “Irish rural society, the man's role was the production and provision of food; where as women's roles generally were concerned with the management of the food through preservation, preparation, and distribution.”7 When the famine struck, women needed to work any way possible in order to provide food for themselves and their families; changing women's roles and women practicing agency are expressed abundantly in these oral