Práta means potato, child. Prátaí póir are seed-potatoes best planted on Good Friday. Iomaire is a potato bed and taobhfhód its own particular sod. Bachlóga are potato sprouts; millíní are the buds. Báinseog phrátaí is a patch of potatoes in bloom, lovelier than you might think.

Caldar is a big potato. Práta préacháin is a potato pecked by a crow. Paidríní are tiny as rosary beads. Sliomach is soggy, prátai breaca have gone off, prátai dubha are nothing but rot. Smoladh is the potato disease; dúchan the blight that turned Ireland inside out.

Goin ocrais is the first pinch of hunger, pianta ocrais, a growl. Ocras buile is a wolf howling in the gut. Cnámh is the bone sharpening under the flesh, féar the grass found in a starving child’s mouth. Paidir a rá is to send up prayers. Tanaí is thin, as in the line between this life and the next.

An Drochshaol is for the hard times, fearann branair for fallow fields. Bóithrín is the rutted road out of town; beannacht a chur le duine a blessing for one who’s left. Caoineadh is a keening song and clagarnach, the sound of rain at night.  

Pádraig is for Patrick, the saint who taught the trinity on the Hill of Slane. Pádraig is my son who left home in order to live. Pádraig is your ancestor, the bridge between the two of us. Deoraíocht is exile. Oidhreacht is inheritance. Ná déan dearmad means don’t forget. Don’t forget, child.

 

 

 

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NB: This speculative essay features Bridget Horan, the author’s ancestor, who lived in Eglish, County Offaly during the famine. Irish words were found in the following sources: Irish Food History: A Companion, (2024), edited by Mac Con Iomaire and Cashman; The Daily Spud Blog (Fifty Ways to Say Potato, 8/15/14), an Irish Central article (8/10/24); The English-Irish Dictionary (https://www.teanglann.ie/en/); the New English-Irish Dictionary (https://www.focloir.ie/en). Thanks to Ursula Quill for checking the Gaelic.
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Sonja Livingston is the author of four books of creative nonfiction and the flash memoir workbook, 52 Snapshots. Honors include an AWP book prize for Ghostbread (a memoir of childhood poverty), a New York State Arts Fellowship, an Iowa Review Award, an Arts & Letters Prize and a VanderMey Nonfiction Prize. Sonja teaches in the MFA Program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is currently at work on a collection of essays that combine research, history and imagination to breathe life into the overlooked lives of her immigrant and working class American ancestors.

Artwork by Char Gardner