Today the Irish potato is being introduced to third world countries to boost the health and lives of people all over the world.
Every night in America dinner may be meat, vegetable, salad and dessert. Forget something? That would be the potatoes.
They may be mashed, baked, pan fried, scalloped or french fried, but a meal just does not seem to be complete without white potatoes. They were not known as Irish potatoes until they became the life-saving staple of the poor in Ireland and left them starving when a blight fell on the plants in 1845.
More precious than gold
Somewhere around 1500 A.D., the Spanish conquistadors went charging into Central and South America looking for gold. What they found became more precious to the world. People are not able to eat gold. People can eat potatoes.
The Indians in the countries now called Peru and Bolivia raised papas in the high mountains. The soldiers and sailors took the tubers onto their ships and found that the firm, round brown bulbs kept well on long voyages. Scurvy, which had plagued sailors for centuries, disappeared. Roasted, boiled or raw, they tasted good and satisfied the stomach.
Eat your potatoes or lose your extremities
Potatoes were introduced into Europe. Grain fields were accompanied by rows of potato plants, their coarse green leaves and tiny white flowers promised hearty white pulp on the table.
The King of Prussia had to threaten to cut off the noses and ears of anyone who refused to eat potatoes. Honest, he did. He believed that they were a great source of nourishment along with the wheat and barley. Before long potatoes were in the basic diet of Europeans.
The Irish find the potato
It was not until the mid 1700s that the potato came to Ireland. The little potato patches beside the huts of the peasants fed the lank stomachs of the tenant farmers as well as their cows and pigs. Combine the praties with milk and pork and the Irish children had bright eyes and rosy cheeks.
Disease strikes the potato
In 1845 disaster struck. An ugly, stinking black fungus attacked the potato plants in America and travelled swiftly across the sea to Europe. The green plants died from the infection and the tubers, when dug, were a slimy, rotten mess.
It was also devastating on the European continent; however people fell back on their grain fields for bread and livestock feed. There was grain in Ireland, too, but it belonged to the landlords, the Ascendancy, and it was loaded into ships to be sold in England and beyond. The farmers had long since learned to depend entirely on the praties from their tiny house gardens. The animals also had nothing to eat.
Four million Irish men, women and children starved to death in the roads and ditches. Some of them gained passage to America and left on rickety old slave ships, many of which became “coffin ships” for the immigrants.
The blight went on for five years. Finally the black disease eased up, but Ireland had lost half of its population by starvation and disease.
The potato may be a blessing to the world
Today the Irish potato is being introduced to third world countries to boost the health and lives of people all over the world.
This once little-known papas has demonstrated and continues to save many lives throughout the world.
Helen Walsh Folsom is the author of St. Patrick's Secrets, Ah, Those Irish Colleens!, and Fianna, The Dark Web of the Brotherhood
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