The Famine Road: Plot

Background and Context

“The Famine Road” is set during the Irish Potato Famine, a devastating historical event in the mid-19th century which resulted in mass starvation, disease and emigration from Ireland.
This poem speaks to the harsh human and social toll of the famine, and the atrocities committed by the British government of the time.
Boland uses the construction of famine roads as a symbol of the starvation policies carried out by the English.
The construction of these roads was part of a public works scheme designed by the English government for poor Irish labourers to earn food, a plan which ultimately failed as the men were too weak to work effectively.

The poem begins by describing the famine roads, including the labouring men who were desperate for food and the observers who watched their work.
The narrative voice, possibly representing the author or the collective Irish people, offers a critical view of these policies and their consequence.
The second part of the poem presents a haunting dialogue between one of the esteemed English observers, Trevelyan, and a Roving Woman, possibly representative of the Irish people or a metaphor for the Irish country itself.
Trevelyan insists on the continuation of the public works, showing a lack of empathy for the starving men.
In contrast, the Roving Woman’s responses are full of emotion, revealing the pain, suffering and despair felt by the Irish during this time.
The poem ends on a powerful note, with the statement “hunger is not our history”, asserting that the Irish are much more than this dark period of their past, and indeed challenging how history is recorded and remembered.