There was an old farmer named O'Donnell, a man with a hard working and loving wife, and three small kiddies, a dear little red-headed boy of eight years old, and two small twin girls, with golden hair and skin so white you could almost see through it. Well now O'Donnell was good man and he loved his family to a pain. Things were so bad after the spuds left that he had to walk for twenty miles every day in the hopes that he might get some work in the town so he could make few pennies to buy scraps of food for his wife and children. O'Donnell himself would eat nuts and berries along the road if he could find them, and then tell his wife not to feed him any of the food he brought from the town, as he had eaten there as part payment for his work. We all know that it is bad to tell a lie, but poor old O'Donnell loved his family so much that he could not bring himself to eat the food that was all they were most likely to get that day, and he knew that his good wife would go hungry if she knew that he had not eaten. So he told this little fib. We should not be too hard on this wonderful loving man for the telling.
One day after getting a good job in the town, old O'Donnell was walking home with a spring in his step as he had food enough for all the family, and a new bonnet for his darling wife. He knew it had been a good day and he knew that without his loving wife working hard for the family in the home, there just might not be a family in those terrible times. So the first thing he thought of in his good fortune was her, and he knew she needed a new bonnet. The bonnet was made of white cotton, with red and blue flowers on it, and it was tied up around the brim with a lovely soft green silk ribbon. As he was walking along, in his mind's eye he could just see the joy on his wife's face and smile in her heart, and he could see the wee ones dancing around the best room holding hands in their happiness just like in the old times before the spuds all left.
As it was such a good day, old O'Donnell was in a hurry to get home with all his plunder. So instead of taking the road out of the town, and then up to the cross and down the side road to his cottage, he decided to make a short cut over the sad old spud fields and get home an hour sooner.
As O'Donnell was walking along he just happened to look down at his feet. Then he saw them. Oh my, he could not believe his eyes, there all around him were thousands and thousands of lovely green, strong, upright spud plants. O'Donnell at first thought that the fairies were playing tricks on him. Just to make sure that they were indeed spud plants, he bent down to take a closer look. Then he saw that the plants had no spuds growing out of them, there were no spuds laying on the ground!
O'Donnell was thunder struck, he thought a what a cruel joke. First he sees spud plants and then just to trick him there are no spuds under them. Oh my he was so sad and angry that he ripped one of the plants out of the ground in a rage. Well now can you imagine the surprise, can you imagine the joy, right there under the spud plant in the ground, O'Donnell found what could be the biggest, the finest, the most lovely looking spuds that any person had ever seen.
I can just see what happened next. O'Donnell rushed to his home. Food and bonnet forgotten in his happiness about the return of the spuds. His wife and children when they heard the news, started dancing around and laughing. His neighbors heard the news and then they started to sing and dance. Soon all the Celtic farmers heard the good news, the whole land was out to celebrate for the spuds coming back to the people. It was happy times again. No more spinach, no more oats all the time, just lovely wonderful happy spuds for all the people.
Now it was harder to dig up spuds than to just pick them up off the ground, but the people were so happy that they were glad just for having the spuds to do the extra work. The other thing was that these spuds had little white things on them that the Celtic farmers had never seen before. These were the eyes that had saved the dear little spuds in the first place from the terrible potato hawks. But now that all the darling spuds lived in the ground, there was no light down there so the dear things didn't need to see with their eyes. Not to worry, the spuds still tasted wonderful.
These days there some people who say that the story of how spuds got their eyes is just a made-up tale, and that the spuds have eyes for this reason or that. However, this is the story told to me by my dear old grandmother and she never in her whole life would ever say anything to mislead or hurt a small child. I was only six when she told me this story. I was a very wee and small at that time, and I know that my grandmother loved me very much. I'm one hundred and five years old now, and I say that's the story of how potatoes got their eyes.
celttooth

The End.