Irish peasant life
In earlier centuries Irish serfs had few, if any, rights. They were not really regarded as people. Legally prevented from speaking in their native tongue, they had to live by their wits, each day a struggle for survival. A tenant farmer would grow his own food, potatoes, other root vegetables, perhaps some flax and oats. Those living near water might fish. They were constantly subject to the vagaries of Ireland’s fickle weather, and its impact on the next crop. A poor year would threaten starvation. Then there was the need to ‘pay’ a landlord for use of his land, sometimes cash, but more often than not in kind; in labour. The landlord would take the lion’s share of a poor tenant’s labour, leaving him little but to scrabble away cultivating his own crop. Few had shoes, fewer had furniture, other than what they had crudely constructed themselves.
Health and hygiene were poorly understood, not that an understanding would have made much difference. Abject poverty was a back drop for cholera, typhus and all the other diseases and afflictions associated with poor living conditions and sub-standard habitation. An Irish serf would not have seen medicine or formal medical treatment, relying on inter-generational folklore and ‘country medicine’ for cures to ailments.
It is moot whether the early nineteenth century life of an Irish serf was comparable with that of an American slave. Yes and No. An American slave had a commercial value and would be treated as such. There was no gain in an owner starving his human estate. Indeed, there was everything to be gained by providing enough to eat and some basic shelter. In this sense, and possibly in this sense only, a slave would have been better off than an Irish serf. The Irish serf had no security of food or shelter, but had one significant advantage. In theory, those without some sort of indentured master – servant arrangement could walk away from a hopeless situation. In practice the decision was an impossible one, to leave a hard but certain life for one of total uncertainty. It was a choice but not a good one.