Talk:Shrule

Massacre

Since there's seems to be some dispute over whether there was a massacre, I thought I'd see what I could find on the web. Firstly, there's two ODNB entries which might be of note. First, from the biography of John Maxwell -

On the outbreak of the Irish rising in 1641 [Maxwell] was forced to flee for his life from his episcopal residence at Killala. Intercepted at the bridge of Shrule, co. Mayo, he was stripped naked, beaten, and left for dead. Only the intervention of Barnabas O'Brien, sixth earl of Thomond, saved his life.

From the biography of Malachy Queally:

An account written by a protestant in 1641 indicates that in Tuam and in the western province generally the Roman Catholic church had prevailed almost to the exclusion of protestantism, but the tensions inherent in this situation were coming to a head. There had been confrontation in 1635, when the refusal of a Galway jury to find land titles for the king had been punished by fines and imprisonments. In consequence there was widespread support in Connaught for the insurrection of 1641. When the principal Catholic nobleman, the marquess of Clanricarde, was reluctant to give active support, leadership devolved on the forceful archbishop of Tuam. In the summer of 1642 Queally raised a troop of 200 foot at his own expense, primarily indeed to maintain order, for though there was no enemy in Connaught there had been a massacre of protestant refugees at Shrule on 13 February.

Next, a couple of bits from Google Books. From Ireland under the Stuarts and during the interregnum, by Richard Bagwell (1909):

According to the Rev. John Goldsmith there were about 1000 English and Scotch Protestants in Mayo, many of whom tried to save themselves by going to mass. He had a brother a priest, and it was owing to the Jesuit Malone and an unnamed friar that he escaped with his life. Several Protestants, including one Buchanan of Strade, and John Maxwell, Bishop of Killala, sought the protection of Sir Henry Bingham at Castlebar, but he refused to admit Goldsmith, who was a convert from Rome, lest his presence should increase the animosity of the Irish. Lord Mayo promised to convoy the whole party safely to Galway fort, and they sout out on February 13, Malachy O'Queely, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, 'faithfully promising the Lord of Mayo to accompany them with his lordship and several priests and friars, to see them safely conveyed and delivered in Galway, or at the Fort of Galway.' The first night was spent at Ballycarra, the second at Ballinrobe, the third at the Neale, and the fourth at Shrule, where a bridge joine the counties of Mayo and Galway. Lord Mayo seems to have declined all responsibility outside of his own county, and on Sunday the 17th he dismissed his followers except one company commanded by Edmund Burke, who proposed to go with them a few miles, and hand them over to an escort of the county Galway. Burke's men began to plunder the unarmed fugitives before they were out of Lord Mayo's sight, and he sent his son Sir Theobald to keep order; according to Theobald's own account he ran over the bridge with his sword drawn to help the English, but was fired at and afterwards 'conveyed away for the safety of his life.' The promised escort, consisting of two companies of the O'Flahertys, then came up and joined the Mayo people in an indiscriminate massacre of men, women, and children. The Bishop of Killala and a few others were saved by the exertions of Ulick Burke, of Castle Hacket, but those killed were not far short of a hundred, including Dean Forgie of Killala and five other clergymen, of whom John Corbet was one.

From Land and Popular Politics in Ireland, by Donald E. Jordan (1994):

The county [Mayo] fell to the rebels in December 1641, two months after the outbreak of the rebellion in Ulster. Shortly afterwards, one of the many massacres to occur in the early months of the rebellion took place at Shrule, when a group of Protestants fleeing Mayo was plundered and killed by the escort taking it to safety in a Galway fort.

This does not seem to be an event which is in any dispute. The 1909 source seems fairly detailed, and based on primary sources. The more recent accounts do not seem to disagree with it. john k (talk) 23:30, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

The killings of settler/colonists are not in dispute; there certainly isn't evidence to justify the term "massacre"; one source using the term specifically in relation to the issue is not sufficient to call something a massacre. See the talk on List of events called massacres. Using a term in its modern form is WP:OR unless comtemporary reliable scources are available. Sarah777 (talk) 08:45, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Numerous sources seem to call it a massacre. Is the ODNB not a contemporary reliable source? john k (talk) 21:30, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Note that there are three sources above which call it a massacre - the ODNB, Jordan, and Bagwell all use the word (so did Mary Agnes Hickson in 1884). Bagwell is obviously old, but both the ODNB and Jordan are quite recent. Now, looking at Talk:List of events named massacres, it seems that this might not be sufficient to list it there, since what we would need for that would be sources that call it the "Shrule Massacre". But the use of the term in this article seems appropriate, since there seem to be numerous sources which call it a massacre. Could you point to any reliable sources which dispute that it was a massacre? john k (talk) 01:50, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm very reliable.....Sarah777 (talk) 01:52, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way, one claim in the current article that the Bagwell source does not seem to support is that Edmond Bourke ordered his men to start killing - it seems unclear whether Bourke was directing the killing, or if he merely could not control his men. We might remove this claim if we cannot find a better source for it. john k (talk) 01:57, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

I am currently editing the text of a Dictionary of National Biography article by Richard Bagwell. I came to the conclusion from the wording of some of the text (eg "All the prisoners taken in a fight near Carrick-on-Suir were executed by martial law.") that he must have had Unionist leanings, and his Wikipedia biography confirms it.

Now that several sources have been given Sarah the edit "The massacre at Shrule: no refs supplied bar a quote from a pamphlet 200 years later", and the changing of the title to "The alleged killings at Shrule" is not justified but the retreat to "Killing of Settlers" also carries a POV as blatant as the one I mentioned by Richard Bagwell. Who describes them as settlers? Not any of the sources above. Under any laws at the time killing unarmed people who's parole as prisoners had been accepted is murder. I personally think that "Massacre at Shrule" is a perfectly acceptable section heading, but as you clearly seem to be arguing from the other side of the Richard Bagwell coin, then if any others support your position that it was not a massacre, I would suggest that a compromise descriptive the title such as "killing of refugees at Shrule" or "killing of Protestant refugees at Shrule", as we can not be sure that all those killed were settlers (some may have been children born in Ireland). --PBS (talk) 10:20, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

This seems like a sensible proposal. john k (talk) 13:01, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Better than using "massacre". The bar for using that word when talking of killings by the English/settler/Protestant/Scots planters is set very high by editors here. And I'd not regard the first generation children of settlers as other than settlers. Again, there is a hazard in trying to apply modern concepts of "law" and "morality" to events 400 years ago (not least the word massacre) - but certainly in Palestine, Israeli communities established in the West Bank are globally regarded as "settlers" though some may be grandchildren of people who moved in back in 1967. (And many Arabs and Muslims would have an even broader definition). In the case of events around the early plantations many of the accounts surviving (the winners write history) are from the planter perspective and portray the rebellion as a savage uprising, discounting and ignoring the fact that many of the natives involved were probably folk ejected by the initial plantations. In those circumstances cleansing the countryside of the planters would simply be reversing a grave injustice and would have no negative moral implications. Sarah777 (talk) 15:27, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

My own view of the cause of systematic distortion of WP:NPOV in these types of issues is that it may be an affect of the fact that the huge majority of people whose mother tongues are English come from the UK, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - all states created or expanded by expelling natives populations and taking the land over the past few hundered years. In many cases this involved the elimination of the cultures or physical genocide. In this context to read of individual actions of the doomed cultures described as "massacres", whether in Mayo or Montana, is very jarring. Sarah777 (talk) 15:44, 15 August 2009 (UTC)