An Irishman's Diary

An unfortunate breach of the peace will soon disturb a quiet south Co Kildare town, writes John Moran.

An unfortunate breach of the peace will soon disturb a quiet south Co Kildare town, writes John Moran.

The place will be roused from its sylvan serenity by a plethora of newspaper, radio and television accounts of the infamous "Siege of Monasterevin", which befell the town 30 years ago next month.

International press and broadcast journalists descended in droves to report on a stand-off in St Evin's Park where republican desperadoes Eddie Gallagher and Marion Coyle were holed up with their captive, Dr Tiede Herrema, managing director of the giant Ferenka industrial plant in Limerick. The two kidnappers had hoped to barter the Dutchman for a number of their jailed colleagues, including Gallagher's unlikely partner Rose Dugdale, an English heiress.

Journalists camped in the town for 18 days while delicate negotiations took place with the desperate pair. After one fusillade of gunfire from the house which injured a garda's finger, things settled down. And while intense activities were going on behind the scenes, there wasn't a whole lot to report.

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So, while the hacks holed up in fine old taverns such as Mooney's and Boland's or the Hazel Hotel might have had enjoyed plenty of scoops of one sort, they had little by way of copy for news-hungry editors in faraway places. Journalists were therefore keenly alert to any local colour or rumour or careless talk which might provide to a new twist or fresh angle for the story. Ingeniously, they also connected the hostelries to the scene of the siege by means of an electric bell so they could be easily summoned. However, local wide-boys cottoned on to it and regularly short-circuited the alarm, prompting fruitless stampedes to St Evin's Park.

Reporters did interesting titbits of local history, such as that the great Irish tenor John McCormack had once lived in nearby

Moore Abbey. But later - from the sublime to the ridiculous - came the fleas story. Dr Herrema complained after his release that he had been "eaten alive by huge fleas", and a story went abroad about the Monster Fleas of Monasterevin. However, it was revealed later in the Special Criminal Court in Dublin that he had received the bites earlier in his captivity before he was taken to the town. Indeed, they weren't even Kildare fleas.

Apart many other weird and wonderful stories that staggered out of the bars of Monasterevin, there was the sober observation that there was an awful lot of water and bridges around the town. This had been noted previously by a regular 19th-century visitor, the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who wrote fondly of the "bogs, river and canals".

Stories were filed near and far about this "Venice of Ireland". But little did the writers know that there was a nugget of truth hidden in this colourful hyperbole. Though the town does indeed possess more than its fair share of bridges, there is a link with Venice that the gentlemen and ladies of the press failed to uncover.

In the Journal of the Irish Georgian Society (Vol V, 2002), Beatrice Whelan of TCD and Monasterevin produced an excellent paper on the real story of a Venice connection, and it doesn't involve bridges or water. Her research into the town's striking church of Saints Peter and Paul reveals that its two baroque marble altar rails came to Ireland from Venice around the year 1712.

Each ornate rail is decorated by three angelic cherubs carved in stone and set in relief against a veneer of black marble. Indeed, such is their exquisite charm that word on the street in Monasterevin is that for generations small girls have been known to slip into the church when no one is around to plant kisses on the cherubs.

Once a little cherub myself, I was baptised beside these very altar rails, as were before me my two brothers, one of whom was killed the year before the siege. Oddly enough, it happened one Friday evening while Tom was driving home from work at the Ferenka plant in Limerick. The plant's closure less than three years later with the loss of 1,400 jobs was a catastrophic loss to the Limerick region.

As for the siege, it was a great relief for everyone the when the whole thing petered out peacefully and Dr Herrema was freed. Recovering back home in the Netherlands, he received thousands of messages from well-wishers throughout Ireland - among them, bizarrely, some begging letters.

For years afterwards, townspeople became thoroughly fed up with endless jibes from outsiders about Dr Herrema this and Eddie Gallagher that, but 30 years on most people won't be worrying unduly about any reminders. The new bypass has lifted the automobile siege and the railway station, which was closed down the year after the Herrema siege, has reopened.

As they say, and not just in Monasterevin, it's all water under the bridge.