The Famine Years in Dingle & West Kerry.

This is the first detailed account of the tragedy of the Great Famine, An Gorta Mór, in the Dingle peninsula, Corca Dhuibhne.

Bryan MacMahon uncovers a wealth of archival detail, enabling readers to experience the impact of the Famine through the graphic and deeply moving accounts of eyewitnesses. The book is a record of the events of ‘Black 47’ and it chronicles the trauma of the desperate years that followed - an drochshaol.

The controversy of the title refers to the passionate debates and divisions incited by the success of the Protestant conversion campaign in Corca Dhuibhne, whose leaders played a crucial humanitarian role in providing Famine relief.  Robust sectarian jousting between Catholic and Protestant clergymen continued until the mid-1850s and echoes of the conflict rippled on into the twentieth century.

 Author Bio

Bryan MacMahon is a retired teacher and a native of Ballyheigue, Co. Kerry who has published many books and articles on local history. His most recent publications are Faith and Fury: the evangelical campaign in Dingle and West Kerry, 1825-45 (Eastwood, 2021) and Ballyheigue in Arms: Portrait of a Kerry Parish, 1914-1923, published in 2023.

He has a special interest in the Famine in Kerry, and this study is a companion to his 2017 book The Great Famine in Tralee and North Kerry (Mercier).