For those interested in the plight of the Irish during the famine you may like to try to see the BBC drama called 'The Hanging Gale' starring the four brothers Joe, Mark, Paul and Stephen McGann who "star in a drama about the Great Famine inspired by their search for their Irish roots. Donegal 1846: the 4 upstanding sons of the Phelan family - two farmers, a school teacher and a priest - are torn between nonviolent protest and bloody revolt when the injustices of the landholding system and the onset of the potato blight combine to devastate their community." The series (2 DVDs in four parts) includes very moving scenes of the potato blight, forced evictions, burning of cottages, forced labor on the roads and forced marches in the depths of winter for half starved men women and children. When they filmed it in Donegal they advertised for large numbers of extras for the crowd scenes, the criteria being that they had to be thin. They sent them all out to a mountain top bare-footed and wet in the middle of winter to make a road. It was very realistic. The DVD is available at the BBC shop online in USA and probably UK as well. (Just google BBC) It illustrates how family research stories such as some listers have shared with us can be turned into very moving drama. It is interesting that there is a large family of Falins in USA, probably descended from this same Phelan family of Donegal.

I was able to buy Hanging Gale at Borders..........a very good film. Kevin