Who were cottiers in Ireland before the Great Famine?

Before the Great Famine, cottiers were landless labourers in Ireland who lived and worked on the farms of tenant farmers.1

These individuals were permitted to cultivate their own small potato plots on the land they occupied. Because they relied almost exclusively on the potato for their diet, a typical cottier family consumed approximately eight pounds of potatoes per person each day, which provided the vast majority of their caloric intake. Historically, the term has also been used to describe peasant farmers or tenants who rented small plots under a rack-rent system, where land was let to the highest bidder.12