Hungry Grass (Féar Gortach)

You walk on an ordinary patch of grass and suddenly become so violently hungry that you can barely make it home. The Hungry Grass, or Féar Gortach, cursed patches of ground said to bring on an overwhelming, almost fatal hunger, sometimes only moments after a person has eaten. A single crumb of bread could save you… but in some tales, people were reduced to chewing boot laces, raw meat, or whatever they could find. And the stories get stranger. We encounter hungry grass growing over graves, fairy forts and places where people supposedly died of hunger; black horses that lure travellers towards deadly lakes; witches, curses and mysterious patches of mountain ground. One tale even tells of a man so desperate with hunger that he began eating the flesh of a hare he was carrying. But where did these stories come from? The Hungry Grass preserves memories of the Great Famine, but it also goes back much further. We explore its eerie connection to the Fear Gorta, the ghostly “Man of Hunger”, and draw a comparison with the Native American traditions surrounding the Wendigo: another supernatural figure associated with famine, but also insatiable hunger, environmental collapse, and cannibalism.