The year 1898 was a stark time in west Cork. Famine had taken hold and there was terrible poverty and distress. The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Daniel Tallon, visited Castletownbere in 1898 to see for himself. The Dublin Mansion House Committee had been established to collect subscriptions and disperse them among local communities.
He came to the area with a team of officials, who met local people desperately trying to ease the situation. The failure of the potato crop was a signal event in the Barony of Bere as it was then known. The local relief committee was only too pleased to receive the dignitaries from Dublin.
Relief measures were discussed. One suggestion was that the Droum Road should be linked with the Tralahan Road - it would give employment and improve the local infrastructure. The road was duly built. It was named the Tallon Road, and a plaque was erected.
In these parts, the folk memory of the famine is still strong. It caused wretchedness and suffering on a scale not properly understood. Words do not adequately describe what actually happened, but there are people still alive who have heard the tales handed down and who can still describe the misery. For them, the saga endures.
In the scale of things, as we become increasingly an urban society, such tales are reaching a diminishing audience. They are none the less valid.
And last weekend it was refreshing to see that the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Senator Joe Doyle, travelled to Castletownbere to mark the anniversary of the Tallon plaque.
In 1898, the Southern Star was full of famine news. It recorded that the visiting dignitaries met the Sisters of Mercy to see the local convent, schools and orphanage - "built some years ago at great expense, and to accommodate 200 children, still unoccupied and awaiting a long-expected governmental aid. Mr Field took note of its requirements. They lunched at the hotel and left for Bantry to catch the evening train to Cork after a little over two hours' stay."
They returned to the capital, leaving behind them desolate souls reduced to eating grass. That was the reality.