IT'S impossible to escape the shadow of Oliver Cromwell. I speak from personal experience, writes Frank McNally
Three hundred yards from where I grew up, near Carrickmacross, is a place called the "Mass Rock", known locally as the site of a Cromwellian massacre (carried out by one of his generals). There are numerous Mass rocks in Ireland, of course. It's said that this one used to have a feature called "Finn McCool's table" which may have been the actual rock. But by the time I was born, the "Mass rock" referred only to a complex of limestone caves, which are there to this day.
Such caves can be dangerous, with sink-holes and other hazards. Even so, many years ago - aged about 11 - I once led a small expedition into the interior. It was not a success. The back-marker of our group deserted at the first sign of darkness.
And although my only remaining comrade agreed to continue, he insisted on going second, on the grounds that there might be badgers within, and it was a well-known fact that, when cornered, a badger would break your leg with his jaws.
So, very gingerly, we proceeded inside, until the first tunnel forked - and with some relief, we realised this an excuse to turn back. It was decided to postpone a full assault on the caves until we had the right equipment, including a proper torch, a guide rope, and an adequate supply of courage.
As for the reputed massacre, local folk memory was, and remains, rather vague. No plaque marks the site. Guide books don't mention it. And I had begun to doubt the whole story until the recent Cromwellian commemorations sent me searching the archives. Wherein, finally, I found the grisly event described by the very soldier who perpetrated it.
Edmund Ludlow - the same man who noted that the Burren had not enough water to drown a man, or wood enough to hang him, etc - was appointed second-in-command of the Irish campaign when Cromwell returned to England in 1650. His was a mopping-up job, stamping out the last pockets of resistance. And here, his memoirs take up the story in South Monaghan.
"I continued my march into the county of Meath [sic]; and coming to Carrickmacross, a house belonging to the Earl of Essex, where the rebels had barbarously murdered one Mr Blany, a justice of the peace in that county, I caused it to be fortified and put a garrison in it. . .
"From hence I went to visit. . .Dundalk; and being upon my return, I found a party of the enemy retired within a hollow rock which was discovered by one of ours, who saw five or six of them standing before a narrow passage at the mouth of the cave. The rock was so thick that we thought it impossible to dig it down upon them, and therefore resolved to try to reduce them by smoke.
"After some of our men had spent most part of the day in endeavouring to smother those within by fire placed at the mouth of the cave, they withdrew the fire. And the next morning, supposing the Irish to be made incapable of resistance by the smoke, some of them with a candle before them crawled into the rock. One of the enemy who laid in the middle of the entrance fired his pistol and shot the first of our men into the head, by whose loss we found that the smoke had not taken the designed effect.
"But seeing no other way to reduce them, I caused the trial to be repeated; and upon examination found that though a great smoke went into the cavity of the rock, yet it came out at other crevices; upon which I ordered those places to be closely stopped and another smother made. About an hour and a half after this, one of them was heard to grone [sic] very strongly, and afterwards more weakly, whereby we presumed that the work was done; yet the fire was continued till about midnight and then taken away, that the place might be cool enough for ours to enter the next morning.
"At which time some went in armed with back, breast, and headpiece, to prevent such another accident as fell out at their first attempt; but they had not gone above six yards before they found the man that had been heard to grone, who was the same that had killed one of our men with his pistol; and who resolving not to quit his post had been, upon stopping the holes of the rock, choked by the smoke.
"Our soldiers put a rope around his neck and drew him out. The passage having been cleared, they entered, and having put about fifteen to the sword, brought four or five out alive, with the priest's robes, chalice, and other furniture of that kind.
"Those within preserved themselves by laying their heads close to a water that ran through the rock. We found two rooms in the place, one of them large enough to turn a pike. . ."
I said earlier that it is impossible to escape the shadow of that era. As further proof, I now live in Dublin - Kilmainham, to be exact, where there are no caves, or mass rocks, or sites of 17th-century massacres. But every time I go to the local Spar shop for my newspaper, I must first climb a steep, forbidding alleyway of 40 steps - named, for reasons I'm not sure about, "Cromwell's Quarters".