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© 大象传媒 2003
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Secrets of Lough Kernan |
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One of the eye witnesses to the event was Peter Hill, the then high sheriff of county Down. The book reveals two different accounts of the drownings by Hill; the latter is more graphic than the first and has different coloured ink in places.
Fitzpatrick points to this as a sign of unworthiness. "And further sayth, that about the beginning of March, 1641 about four score men, women, and children of English and Scottish were sent by direction of Sir Phelim O'Neile from the County of Armagh downe to Claneboys, in the County of Downe where they were met by one Capt. Phelim M' Art M'Brian, and his company of Rebells (most of his owne Sept), which said CaptaiI Phelim and his company carried and forced all these protestants from tkence into a lough called Lough Kearnan in the same county In which Lough, he and his said company forced (them upon the ice) and drowned them all, both men, women, and children, spareing none of them at all."
The second deposition is Peter Hill conveying the words of a Christopher Bellow whom Hill ‘hath great cause to beleeve’: "Phelim M'Art McBrenn (sic), and his wicked company had brought the fourescore English and Scottes, that came out of the County of Armagh upon the aforesd. lough, called Lough Kearne, And whereas they found it so frozen with ice that they could not be drowned nere the sides there of, then they forced them as far as they could on the ice, But not dareing to drive or pursue them farr for feare to breake the Ice under their owne fete, and soe to be drowned themselves, They those wicked and merciles Irish (then) tooke the sucking children from their, parents, and those that carried them, and; with all the strength they could, threw them as far as they were able towards the place where the ice was weake and thinn : Whereupon those parents,nurses, and friendes, striving to fetch off the children, went soe farr that they burst and brake through the ice. and then and there both they and the children perished together by drowning, all save one man (that escaped from them wounded) (sic), and a woman; whose names he cannot express."
Though both stories relate to the same event, the forced drowning of around eighty men, women and children, Fitzpatrick argues that the latter version, being somewhat glorified, and the fact that it was written using different coloured ink, is validation of rumour not truth.
However, the author adds a foot note, in which he recounts meeting a local farmer at the lough, "I remember well, one fine summer`s evening, in the year 1872, meeting on the shore of the Lake an intelligent old farmer named McInerney, who lived within a stone`s cast of the water. He Told me how ‘Phellimy O’Neale drownded the people in that lough the time of the wars in Ireland’. I regret that I did not then make a note of what he further said : but his statement leaves no doubt to the tradition of a tragedy having been enacted there"
Fitzpatrick also reveals some of the details surrounding the official judgements against one of the alleged perpetrators of the massacre, Phelim O`Neill : ”You yourself confessed, as is testified, that you killed 680 at Scarvagh (Scarva near Gilford), that you left neither man, woman, nor child in the barony of (illegible), and left none at all in the plantations about you.” (High Court of Justice, 5th March, 1652). Sir Phelim O'Neill was executed in Dublin on 10 March 1653.
Sting in the tale
While Thomas Fitzpatrick was carrying out his research, he poured over hundreds of manuscripts from the 1640's. Unfortunately during the that period in history cholera was rife and not all of the papers he examined had been fumigated. Thomas Fitzpatrick contracted a cholera related disease and died in 1912.
Perhaps the people who were drowned on Lough Kernan finally had their say. A quote from the historian Fitzpatrick treated with disdain over his comments on the Trinity depositions is perhaps an apt conclusion.
"We read the past by the light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows fall, or as the point of vision alters". James Anthony Froude.
Your comments
1 Jason Storebo from Auburn, Washington USA - 26 December 2003
"Why is there any reason to doubt that the atrocities which were reported as having taken place in Ireland in the 1600s, did in fact generally occur as has been described. Just looking at all the verified horrors, commited in various parts of the world, from just the past few years makes it seem perfectly believable."
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