Famine Echoes - Softcover

In the 1940s, the Folklore Commission conducted interviews with thousands of elderly people around Ireland who remembered what they themselves had heard from ancestors who had survived the Famine. Cathal Poirteir has edited a selection of these recollections, arranging the material in an order which follows the rough chronology of the Famine itself. This remarkable book, dealing as it does with the oral transmission of folk memory, is a record of the last living link with the survivors of that terrible event.

Cathal Poirteir is an author, journalist and PPI-awardwinning broadcaster. He has worked with RTE Radio 1 for over thirty years, producing programmes on a variety of topics from current affairs and politics to drama, music and literature, with a particular focus on Irish language programming. He has produced a number of CDs about Irish literature, including Blasket Island Reflections, a series on the Blasket Island writers; The Appeals of the Midnight Court, a documentary about the poet Brian Merriman; and Traditional Tales of Wonder, a selection of folktales and legends from Donegal storyteller Mici Sheain Neill. He is the author of The Great Irish Famine, and Famine Voices and their Irish-language counterparts Gneithe den Ghorta and Glortha on Ghorta. He is the editor of two collections - the short story collection Scealta san Aer and the poetry collection Eigse san Aer.