Wexford doesn't have great memories of 1649. Still, they won't fear to speak of it, at some length, in the coming year. As England prepares to celebrate Oliver Cromwell's birth 400 years ago, his activities at the age of 50 on this island are another matter entirely.
October 11th, 1649, in Wexford was the occasion of one of the worst massacres in Irish history, or so traditional history books would have us believe.
Seamus Molloy, chairman of the Wexford Historical Society, agrees that in the minds of most Cromwell was "a bit like Hitler".
He landed in Ireland on August 15th, 1649. His mission was to secure the new commonwealth state he had just established in England from any royalist threat that might lurk in the provinces of Ireland.
Having captured Drogheda and killed almost every citizen there, he turned the attentions of his army, said by some to number up to 16,000, to the south of Ireland, and most particularly Wexford.
The usual squabbling, politicking and lack of communication between councillors, even in the 17th century, saw one party wishing to allow Cromwell's adversary, Ormond, into the town, while the other believed they had better yield to Cromwell.
The disagreement led to Cromwell believing the town had given itself up to his men, when in fact the townspeople had made no plans for his arrival.
When the Lord Protector's troops got into the town, they reacted to the townspeople's terror riotously. Up to 2,000 Wexford people are said to have been killed.
And so their descendants find themselves today with just 34 days left to the 350th anniversary of Cromwell's coming to town.
A ramble about Wexford on a November afternoon with Mr Molloy reveals that Cromwell fever has not gripped the town. Commemorative 350th anniversary plaques and wind-up Cromwell dolls do not fill the shops. Just how much interest there will be in the Cromwell anniversary is unclear.
"I would hope that there might be some rethink of the traditional attitudes," Mr Molloy says, as we walk towards the Bull Ring, allegedly the site of the worst massacre. "The people were terrified by the tales they heard of Drogheda," he says. "When Cromwell's men came into the town, it's fair to say they probably ran amok, and the people were trying to get away."
The area we're in is an open space at the end of the narrow, winding Main Street. "This, with the narrow streets around it, was a bottleneck, where hundreds would have been slaughtered by the army," says Mr Molloy.
The soldiers were, he adds, almost certainly not acting on orders from Cromwell; the appalling scene arising more from the confused and divided state of negotiations between Cromwell and the town's commander, David Synnott, on the one hand, and Synott's envoy, Capt James Stafford, on the other. The slaughter, if it happened (it is still disputed by some), was perhaps not in the end Cromwell's doing after all.
So, in this peace-process-driven era of Irish history, should we be revising our traditional view of this hate-figure of Irish lore? Mr Molloy thinks we should.
"Cromwell might be one of Irish history's misunderstood figures. Some say there was no massacre. Hore, who wrote the definitive work on local history, The History Of Wexford, in the late 1800s, says that there is no documentary evidence of any massacre, or of anyone unarmed being killed. There is no doubt, though, that six Franciscan friars were."
The Friary is still in Wexford, although a member of the community, Maurice Dowling, felt it better not to talk about "something that happened a long time ago".
The issues of evidence and the use and abuse of history, as these relate to Cromwell's campaign in Wexford, will be among those explored at seminars planned for next October, says Mr Molloy.
These are still at the planning stage but will take place over a number of days in the town.
Tom Reilly, author of Cromwell - An Honourable Enemy, which is due for publication early next year, would certainly like to see the conventional view of Cromwell reappraised. His book aims to challenge the traditional view.
"Cromwell has to be seen in the context of a horrendously violent time. He was scrupulous in his application of the rules of warfare as they then were."
Across the water, John Goldsmith, curator of the Cromwell Museum in Cambridge and member of the Cromwell Quarter-centenery Committee 1599-1999 in Britain, says his colleagues have been careful to ensure that the event is seen as a commemoration of Cromwell's birth and not a celebration.
"We realise that he is a controversial figure in Ireland and amongst the Irish community here. There are a lot of things he did which were not heroic," he says, pointing out that Cromwell was as ruthlesss with the people of Leicester in 1645 when they rose against the commonwealth, as ever he was to be in Ireland. Cromwell, he adds, was using the tactics of terror to, in his 17th-century way, protect the common good of the wider community.
In England he is remembered as a people's champion. The birthday itself, April 25th, 1599, will be marked across the country with popular and academic events, while his home town of Huntingdon will be holding a 17th-century street market and a special party for anyone who shares their birthday with Cromwell.
"The difficulty in Ireland," says Mr Goldsmith, "is that his image has become so rooted in an anti-English interpretation of history. The important thing from modern history's point of view is Cromwell's international significance. It is very interesting to see how interpretations of the same man can change."