| " An
account of the murder at Mullaghmast. In the year 1705, there
was an old gentleman of the name of Cullen, in the County
Kildare, who often discoursed with one Dwyer and one Dowling,
actually living at Mullaghmast when this horrid murder was
committed, which was about the sixteenth year (recté,
nineteenth) of Queen Elizabeth's reign; and the account he gives
of it is, that those who were chiefly concerned in this horrid
murder were the Deavils, the Grehams, the Cosbys, the Piggotts,
the Bowens, the Hartpoles, the Hovendons, the Dempsys, and the
FitzGeralds. The last five of these were, at that time, Roman
Catholics, by whom the poor people murdered at Mullaghmast were
chiefly invited there, in pretence that said people should enter
into an alliance offensive and defensive with them.
But their reception was to put them all to
death, except one O'More, who was the only person that escaped.
Notwithstanding what is said that one O'More only had escaped
the massacre, yet the common tradition of the country is, that
many more had escaped through the means of one Henry Lalor, who,
remarking that none of those returned who had entered the fort
before him, desired his companions to make off as fast as they
could, in case they did not see him come back. Said Lalor, as he
was entering the fort, saw the carcasses of his slaughtered
companions ; then drew his sword, and fought his way back to
those that survived, along with whom he made his escape to
Dysart, his family's ancestral home." |
