An Irishman's Diary

The quiet south Co Kildare town of Monasterevin is perhaps mainly remembered by outsiders for an incident of some notoriety that occurred during the early days of the Troubles. An unfortunate Dutch industrialist, Dr Tiede Herrema, was kidnapped and held there by a wild republican firebrand named Eddie Gallagher, and an accomplice, Marian Coyle. For 18 days in that summer of 1975 the nation held its breath, as the Garda and the Army laid siege to a house where Dr Herrema was being held. The attention of the world was fixed on Monasterevin, as the press pack filed copy and filled glasses there for the duration of the stand-off. Despite all the media attention, nothing much happened before the desperados finally gave in and released the good doctor. But it was the kind of attention that the townsfolk - and Dr Herrema - could, quite frankly, have done without. Even to this day, whenever people mention that they are from Monsterevin, the response often goes something like: "Oh, of course, Eddie Gallagher and Dr Herrema, the Siege of Monasterevin. Wasn't it shockin'?" The town itself gained a certain notoriety. Locally, initial excitement and embarrassment soon turned to boredom. After the siege ended the world went away, things settled down and the town went back quietly about its normal business, grumbling occasionally about the unwanted attention it had received. After a while motorists probably continued to note Monasterevin only as a place they passed through at 50 miles an hour on their way to or from somewhere. And the Dublin train decided it wouldn't bother stopping any more. Yet the comparatively recent "siege" is a mere drop in the historical ocean for a town has been touched by other sieges, and many of the great historical conflagrations of the past few hundred years.At this stage I must confess that I have no small interest in the place, as I spent my first three years there and have many kinfolk in the town and nearby townlands. Whenever I think of Monasterevin town, I often think of my maternal grandfather, Ody Nolan. Ody and my grandmother, Mary, lived in a cottage at Passlands, beside the Pass Bridge, over the river Barrow, about a half mile outside the town. I often stayed there as a child for the summer months and remember being fascinated by the sight of an old Webley revolver, which lay, ungreased, rusting incongruously over the range. It was from Ody's old War of Independence and Civil War days. For some reason it hadn't been decommissioned. Odie also found an ancient flintlock pistol while clearing weeds under the Pass Bridge. The pistol probably dated from the 1798 rebellion, when local Whitefeet (elsewhere called Whiteboys) rebels, who had been subsumed by the United Irishmen, laid siege to the occupying yeomen. Some 68 people were killed during this siege, which culminated with a bloodbath on Main Street, in which the better armed yeomanry defeated the croppies. Perhaps it was a despairing rebel, fleeing the slaughter, who threw the flintlock into the Barrow while escaping out of town through Passlands, on the way towards Ballagh and way beyond to the relative safety of Bogtown, in the wilds of Co Laois. A local curate, Fr Prendergast, was hanged on main street in a wave of reprisals which followed the rebellion, and which claimed the lives of a further 60 to 70 people. Yeomen claimed Fr Prendergast was seen in the rebel camp before the rising and that he was their leader, while local historians say he was merely hearing confessions on the eve of the battle. The whole event was recalled earlier this month in a commemoration which involved a partial re-enactment of the battle of Main Street by local schoolchildren, and in a Latin Mass, which would have been the norm in '98. And the Army Band played. The Pass Bridge itself is linked to an even earlier disturbed historical epoch. It lies in Passlands, so named because Oliver Cromwell and his dreaded army passed this way a century and a half before the '98 rebellion on his way to lay siege to the O'Dempsey clan in their fastness of Lea Castle, not far from Bogtown.Other great conflicts also touched the town. In Passlands graveyard lie two poignant casualties of war. Buried there are the remains of two young men, side by side, their tombstones almost touching each other. These are the Sheppard brothers, Syl and John. Syl lost his life in the 1916 Rising, while John died as a result of wounds received at the end of the Great War. There is nothing seen as being unusual about their differing choices, however, in the former garrison town of Monasterevin, in the garrison county of Kildare.Gerard Manley HopkinsBut all is not sorrow. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins visited Monasterevin regularly in the latter part of the last century and wrote lovingly of the "Burling Barrow Brown" which flows through it. Those visits were, he wrote: "The props and struts of my existence". An annual Hopkins Summer School is held every July in the town, with students and scholars attending from all over the world. On a happy personal note, my grandfather, Ody, ran a maypole dance with music and magic in the big yard behind his small Passlands cottage in the summer months of the mid-1950s, until ill health caught up with him. Hundreds of people from near and far came to Ody's big back yard, and listened and danced to the band. Many will tell you that they met their future partners there. His son, Eugene, continues the musical tradition to this day, as a member of the multi-award winning Bridge Ceili Band. (No, they don't do The Siege of Monasterevin!). Eugene's son, Owen, meanwhile, tells me he happened to be talking to a young lady from Portarlington not too long ago when she confided that, as a child, she lived in terror of the very word Monasterevin and froze in fear at the mere mention of the name - she had always misheard it as Monster Heaven. Now there's demonisation for you!