From Famine to Festivity: The Complex Legacy of Ireland’s Potato

Despite their connection, the potato is not native to Ireland. It made its way onshore most likely via a Spanish merchant ship around 1600. This was the time of the local chieftains, when the Irish ruled themselves.

At that time, the average Irish diet was a blend of native grains made into breads, plus plants and meat. The English began their colonization of Ireland shortly after this. English colonial creep steadily pushed the native Irish to the margins of society and their physical land. They were pushed off the good land by colonizers and left with the bad, hard-to-farm tracts of land.

Lumper

Enter the lumper. The lumper is not a potato as we would recognize it today. Its redeeming features were that it grew quickly and almost anywhere. Potato ridges have been found climbing western mountainsides. Its downside was that it was unappetizing. The taste has been described as soapy or waxy. It had a pale-yellow skin and a watery texture. It was also subject to blight, but that was an afterthought.

The rise of the potato in Ireland mirrored the rise of the Industrial Revolution working class. As an abundant food source, the potato facilitated the growth of the Irish population. The Irish population growth differed from the rest of the western world, because, instead of filling the cities, the Irish multiplied in the country.

The pre-famine Irish person was taller and healthier than their European peers. The potato provided better sustenance than the bread and beer diets of their urban contemporaries.

The crazy thing is how far that went. People in the west of Ireland ate nothing but potatoes – not “a lot of potatoes,” nothing but potatoes. One tenth of the land mass was devoted to the potato, and one third of the population subsisted on nothing but potatoes.

The poor families could grow them on the poor soil they had been pushed on to. The other advantage was that the poor families lacked many things, but the potato only needed one pot to cook them. So, the population thrived, as much as poor people could, on the potato. The diet was horribly boring.

Then came the perfect storm. When the blight came, peaking in 1847, the rural population had literally lost knowledge on how to eat other things. Generations of poverty and dependence on a seemingly limitless crop had made them vulnerable. That generational dependency on the potato had meant that families in parts of the country had lost the knowledge of how to prepare other foods.

Do we blame the victims?

A German who tried to help in the famine by sending grain found that he had to send bakers to teach the country people how to bake.

This statement is not meant to blame the victims. But it does illustrate the knock-on effects of colonization and poverty. The Irish people and the potato took a simultaneous hit that they never completely recovered from.

The Irish still eat plenty of potatoes. The average American eats 49.7 kilograms (109 lbs) of potatoes per year, the average Irish person comes in with a healthy 85 kg. (187 lbs) of potatoes per year. They are all shamed by the people of Belarus, who eat a whopping 155 kg. (341 lbs) of potatoes per year.

Irish potatoes are different than the ones we eat today. When we think of potatoes, we probably envision a big baked potato weighing in at a pound or so, our Russets and Idahos. The potatoes that are favorites in Ireland are more the size of a fist. The first crop of the summer is greeted with the same enthusiasm that we give to the first crop of sweet corn.

Jacket Potatoes

Where we eat baked potatoes, the Irish favor jacket potatoes. Those are boiled with skins on and maybe buttered, but never cheesed, baconed or sour creamed! The name comes from the appearance that the skin has when cooked, just opening like a jacket.

A high compliment for a cooked potato is when it is called lovely and floury, meaning fluffy. A favorite floury variety is called the Golden Wonder. The name alone is reverential when you compare it to Idaho.

Ten years or so ago, Michael McKillop, a farmer in N. Ireland, was curious about the infamous famine lumper. He found some seed potatoes and sowed around ten acres with those on his land in Antrim. A copper sulfate mixture can be spread now to treat blight conditions.

He found the potatoes as promised, a bit wet and soapy tasting. Now at least we can see for ourselves what it was the Irish lived on in those pre-Famine days. He has had a lot of interest in his crop, at least from the curious.

Try to think of a country more associated with a single vegetable than Ireland and the potato. I can’t. My husband has been told too many times to count that “of course he wants a potato.” It feels a little racist, but the Irish would never let you know they were offended.

It is a mixture of pride and the feeling of the complicated relationship. The Irish and the potato are linked culturally, no matter how badly things turned out in those dark years of the hunger. The potato allowed the Irish to thrive, at least for a while, despite colonization.

There are old sayings that involve the potato, like “Beauty doesn’t boil the potato.” The link runs deep. Like many things, you just have to accept the past and move on with the good stuff. It’s always complicated.

Thanks to the Irish History Podcast for fascinating information.