Anyone walking on it was doomed to perpetual and insatiable hunger.
Harvey suggests that the hungry grass is cursed by the proximity of an unshriven corpse (the fear gorta).
[1] William Carleton's stories suggest that faeries plant the hungry grass.
[2] According to Harvey, this myth may relate to beliefs formed in the Great Famine of the 1840s.
[1] In Margaret McDougall's letters, the phrase "hungry grass" is - by analogy to the myth - used to describe hunger pangs.