Taken From "The Irish Potato Famine" by Carole Gallagher
One day in 1847, Bride Sheain came home to her cabin with some food. As she entered, she called out to her sixteen year old daughter but there was no response. The emaciated child lay motionless on a heap of straw and Bride knew as soon as she touched her cold arm that her daughter was dead.
For a while, Bride and her husband had been able to keep their family alive by eating limpets and periwinkles that washed up from the sea. But that food was not enough. One by one the children and their father grown silent and unseeing, then lapsed into unconsciousness from which they never awoke.
Bride set down her things. She poured some water into a bowl and washed her dead child as best she could and dresses her. Then she went to the garden. From the little haycock there, Bride tied some hay and twisted it until she had a rope that would hold together. She tied the body of her daughter onto her back.
When Bride reached the church, Bride put down her daughter. She wanted to dig a hole but had no shovel. Two neighbors saw her and came over to help. The two men buried Bride's daughter without a coffin, for there was none. When the grave had been filled with dirt, Bride spoke to her dead family. "God bless you now, all of you", she prayed. "Nobody else will join you now. There is only me left and there will be nobody to look after me to bury me here or somewhere else". Then Bride turned and went back to where she came from.
It is said that Bride did survive the famine and lived by herself to an old age. She made her living by spinning.
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