Explain how the events in the Black Harvest can be linked to the Irish potato famine.

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Explain how the events in the Black Harvest can be linked to the Irish potato famine.

The Black Harvest is a play about a mother and her children, Colin Prill and baby Alison, and their cousin Oliver, who are on holiday in Ireland. They are staying in a new bungalow that has been built over a burial ground. It is set in about the 1990's.. Oliver likes to think he is an archaeologist and digs a trench out in the garden where he finds a decayed rattle, a child's skull and a buckle from a belt. After he has disturbed the ground strange things start to happen, because he has released the potato blight disease.

The food in the house they are staying in goes mouldy especially the potatoes. The cow's milk, which they get from Donald's cows, goes off. They collect it fresh in the morning but it goes off very quickly during the day. The children constantly feel hungry. Colin tries to eat the dog food because he is so hungry, but it is crawling with maggots. This is how children would have felt in 1845 in the Potato Famine. They had no refrigerators to keep food cool and fresh and milk would have gone off quickly. They would not have had stores of food as they couldn't afford it, only the potatoes that they grew.
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The baby gets ill .She won't stop screaming and won't eat. Mum takes her to the doctor who can't find anything wrong. This is how upsetting it would be for mothers of small babies who were starving. They wouldn't be able to go to a doctor as it was too expensive, so they would just have to let them suffer.

The 3 children, Colin, Oliver and Prill, get left alone in the house when mum goes to the doctor. They go to the local shop because all the food has gone mouldy and see strange images of ...

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