The Killing Snows: The Defining Novel of The Great Irish Famine

December 12th, 1846. At the height of the Great Hunger - the Killing Snows. As the Irish Famine came towards its climax of starvation and disease, Ireland was hit by the worst snow storm in recent history. Nothing like it had been seen in living memory, nor has it in all the years since. In 1846, the potato crop had failed for the second time, and this time the failure was total. In a panic, the Government instituted road building works as a means of paying people to buy corn. By November half a million people were working at 7 and 8 pennies a day, dropping to 2 and 3 pennies as piecework was introduced. But the weather worsened and it began to snow. In 1990, a Famine Relief payroll was discovered in a farm building in County Mayo. It covered 4 weeks in November and December 1846 in the Ox Mountains in East Mayo. It clearly showed the evidence of the reduction in wages week after week. Most horrific of all, the payroll ends abruptly in the final week as the heaviest snowstorm hit Ireland on December 12th, and the people in the mountains were cut off to starve or freeze to death. 'The Killing Snows' was inspired by this document. It is also based on the true story of the man who wrote it, of the woman who loved him and of an impossible love story played out against a setting of famine, fever and death.