The great Irish frost of winter 1739-40 in Mayo recalled
By Tom Gillespie
DECEMBER 1939 marked the bicentenary of the terrible frost of the winter of 1739-40, the most intense which the country ever experienced, and which led to the second greatest famine on record in Irish history.
Through this frost some 400,000 Irish people perished from want and disease.
To mark that anniversary, The Connaught Telegraph published a graphic account in their edition of December 30, 1939, recalling the great Irish frost of 1739-40.
The article read:
December of 1739 began fairly well. But after the first week the weather turned wet and windy; then there were occasional frosty fogs.
These followed nights and days or more or less severe frosts until the night of December 27, which made the whole country shiver and covered lakes as well as rivers with ice.
In the south of Ireland there was a belief that the frost of the 27th was so severe that it penetrated the earth for nine inches.
This date in late December was long remembered as the night of the great frost, for all the country was numbed by the Arctic cold even before Christmas.
When the temperature falls to such a degree the weather is usually calm. The frost of 1730-40 was remarkable for the fact that for the most part it was accompanied by a high and intolerable piercing wind.
For weeks there was no sign of abetment of the intense cold. A few days before January 27, 1740, the wind died to calm, but January 27, like December 27, was unbearably cold. At the end of January there was a slight thaw, but this did not last for more than a few days.
For the first two weeks of February the weather was as hard as during the preceding month, and during February also the cold winds again blew strong. Before the end of this month there was a complete thaw and welcome rains.
The exact duration of the frost is uncertain, for accounts vary considerably. Most of the cold records say it lasted seven or eight weeks. But the historian of old Limerick, Ferrar, who must have remembered it, said the frost 'exceeded any other within the memory of man. It began at Christmas, lasted nine weeks, and was succeeded by a great scarcity …'
No doubt there was freezing weather in mid-December, 1739, but the first really terrible night felt by the whole land, as stated, was the night of the 27th of that month.
The havoc caused during the seven to nine weeks during which Ireland was ice-bound was terrible in its immediate effects, and even more terrible in its future consequences.
Before recounting the horrible manner in which the prolonged frost affected the country’s human inhabitants, it will be as well to consider some of the more natural consequences of what was known to tradition as the year of the great frost.
Many scores of thousands of trees and shrubs were frozen to destruction. Evergreens and furzes were amongst the first to succumb.
Then the oaks, great and small, were wounded to death by King Frost’s keen white sword.
The greatest damage to trees was caused by the occasional showers which fell before a thaw had set in. The rain froze on the tree branches and so encrusted them with solid ice they broke down under the weight.
Among the vegetables, potatoes, as we shall see, were soon destroyed; in most cases even the hardy turnips were ruined. Parsnips were amongst the few vegetables which escaped almost unscathed, but save in the gardens of the well-to-do this vegetable was seldom grown.
Birds in their thousands perished. The fields were covered with the starved little bodies of snipes, field-fares and quails. The sparrows and the redbreasts somehow managed to live. It is easy to understand how the sea fowl fared better than birds which lived inland.
Rabbits died in such numbers that many years elapsed before they were again as numerous as they were before 1739. Deer in enclosed parks, and even wild deer, suffered torments from hunger, thirst and cold. In one park 800 deer died.
What affected the country people more was the loss of cattle and sheep. The loss among cattle, though considerable, was not too severe.
But even at the end of January 1740, the wool was falling off the poor sheep; there was also a rot among these animals immediately after the frost, and they died in thousands.
All the rivers and streams were turned into ice. Watermills had to cease working. Tents, we are told, were in various places erected upon the frozen rivers, and dancing and various amusements were held upon the ice during the first week or two of January.
About this time also England experienced hard weather, and it is on record that there was an ice-fair held on the River Thames, which was frozen over.
On January 5, said a report from Nenagh, Tipperary, a hurling match was held on the frozen bosom of the Shannon. While the company enjoyed themselves hurling and witnessing the play, a huge fire was lighted on the ice and a whole sheep roasted upon it. The roasted mutton was distributed to the hurlers and the crowd generally.
Such joyous events were many during the first couple of weeks, for people had then no foreboding that King Frost was going to reign so long.
From the Dublin Daily Post of Tuesday, January 1, 1740, we learn that there was a violent storm on the previous Saturday night. 'The cruiser, Man of War', says the journal, ‘being near the North Bull in great danger, cut her cables, and ran up between the walls as far as Sir John’s Quay, where she now lies frozen up; about 100 press’d men walked to the shore on the ice with several of the crew, but it is said they gave their honour they would return. We had so severe a frost on Saturday and yesterday that the Liffey is all frozen; numbers walk across the ice; and from George’s Quay great crowds go on the ice to Man of War.’
There was even a dark side to King Frost’s two-months’ ruthless reign. In 1740 the Penal Laws were rigidly in force and the great majority of the people of Ireland lived in miserable hovels, existing almost altogether on potatoes.
It was the almost the universal custom to allow potatoes remain where they were sown until around Christmas.
The crop was then lifted from the ground and stored in various ways but not in pits covered with earth.
We can imagine the horror of the humble classes when they discovered that the frost had destroyed almost their entire 1739 crop of potatoes, their only means of sustenance.
Having little or nothing else to eat, the people ate the frozen potatoes and similar unwholesome diet. It was no wonder the entire land was soon visited by fatal forms of fever which led to thousands of deaths.
Even this was not the worst result. There being few potatoes to eat, there was very little seed to sow in the spring of 1740. Naturally there followed the still greater Famine of 1741-42, during which hundreds of thousands perished from starvation and disease.
In the history of Ireland in the 18th century, Lack says that the great famine of 1740-41, “which followed the great frost of 1739, thought it hardly left a trace of history, and hardly excited any attention in England, was one of the most fearful upon record.”
He quotes a contemporary observer who says: “Want and misery are in every face, the rich unable to relieve the poor, the roads spread with dead and dying bodies, mankind the colour of the docks and nettles they feed on, two or sometimes three on a car going to the grave for want of bearers to carry them, and many buried only in the field and ditches in which they perished.”