"The Great Famine or the Great Hunger (Irish: An Gorta Mór or An Drochshaol) is the name given to the famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1849. The Famine was due to the appearance of "the (potato) Blight" (also known as phytophthora)– the oomycete that almost instantly destroyed the primary food source for the majority of the island's population. The immediate after-effects of The Famine continued until 1851. Much is unrecorded, and various estimates suggest that between 500,000 and more than one million people died in the three years from 1846 to 1849 as a result of hunger or disease. About 12% of the population. Some two million refugees are attributed to the Great Hunger (estimates vary), and much the same number of people emigrated to Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia.
that would be the one....it was so deadly due to the lack of any other available food.
This last link properly points out that it is erroneous to refer to it as a famine, since only the potato crop failed.
This would be why Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized for Britain's role in the Irish Potato Famine, in 1997.
Oh the praties they grow small, over here
Oh the praties they grow small
And way up in Donegal
We eat them skins and all, over here, over here
We eat them skins and all, over here.
Oh I wish that we were geese, night and morn,
Oh I wish that we were geese
Till the hour of our release
When we'd live and die in peace, stuffing corn, stuffing corn
When we' d live and die in peace, stuffing corn.
Oh, they'll grind us into dust, over here
Oh, they'll grind us into dust,
But the Lord in whom we trust
Will return us crumb for crust, over here, over here
Will return us crumb for crust, over here.