Boyle suffered hardship during the famine years (1847–49). The following quote from the novel Woodbrook is one example: "A retired herd, Mick Maxwell, speaking to Thompson about his grandfather during the famine, related the following: 'when his grandfather, the only man strong enough, brought fifty and sixty corpses on a barrow, one by one, two miles from Cootehall near his home to the graveyard at Ardcarne'."