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Bypassing History
Early one morning last week I forsook the blue skies of Ulster for the grey mists of an Irish Republic: that is, I drove south to Dublin. I was on the M1, on the outside lane, hitting seventy within seconds and calculating how long my journey would take when it suddenly occurred to me that there wasn't always a motorway here.
I think work began on the M1 around 1960, splitting the Bog Meadows in two, one half eventually being drained and turned into an industrial estate. I vaguely recollect that either at the Broadway end or at Stockman's a child was killed playing at the site when a tunnel caved in.
I also remember two teenage boys knocking on our door in Corby Way and trying to sell baldy baby rabbits out of a shoe box. They told my mom the sad story that the parents had been killed and the burrow destroyed by JCBs levelling an embankment. She asked them why they had such small ears and no tufts. Here, it needs to be stated, she was not referring to the two urchins. They shut the shoe box, huffed, withdrew the offer and moved on, eventually finding a gullible mother with a spoiled brat of a son in North Green to whom they sold the two rats.
Before the motorway was built one headed off down Finaghy Road North for the drive to Dublin, passing through villages and towns in the North such as Lisburn, Hillsborough, Dromore, Banbridge, Loughbrickland and Newry, all of which have their unique histories and have now been by-passed. Back then few people had cars - it was my Uncle Seamus who drove us down for our summer holiday - so there was little congestion until you reached the border, which felt like a border, because of the long queues and the need for official papers for the car which had to be stamped. Grown, uniformed men, defending the North's economic miracle against the impoverished papacy to the south, asked a list of questions about when you last saw a pound of butter, had you many watches on your wrist, were you an alcoholic (that is, why was there a bottle of spirits in the boot), and when were you intending coming back.
Sometimes they pulled in your car, took everyone out and searched the vehicle, while the real smugglers, your cousins in the car behind, got through.
Crossing into the South was a relief - even though 'they' had sold out 'The North' (or "the black North", as many called it). Still, the atmosphere felt more relaxed and it was an occasion for singing, "We're off the Dublin in the green, in the green", and celebrating the limit of the writ of the hated Stormont.
We stopped for sweets in sleepy Dundalk, while the adults had a drink in a place called The Congo Bar. Then it was off through Castlebellingham and Dunleer towards Drogheda where we would scream: "Mammy, mammy, can we see the head of Oliver Plunkett!!!"
"No, you saw it last year."
"We want to see it again!"
The arrival of Cromwell in Ireland in 1649 initiated the massacre and persecution of Catholics, including the massacres of civilians at Drogheda and Wexford. Cromwell left in 1650 but his legacy was enacted in anti-Catholic legislation. Catholic priests were outlawed and those who continued to administer the sacraments were hanged or transported.
In 1669, when anti-Catholicism eased, Plunkett was appointed Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland. He was later arrested and falsely charged with treason. When the authorities could not get him convicted at his trial in Dundalk he was brought to London where he was not given enough time to defend himself. With the help of perjured witnesses (oh yes, supergrasses didn't spring out of thin air in 1982, you know) he was sentenced to be hanged, disembowelled, quartered and beheaded at Tyburn for "promoting the Catholic faith".
He refused to save himself by giving false evidence against his brother bishops. Oliver Plunkett publicly forgave all those who were responsible for his death on July 1, 1681. But we didn't! His head is preserved in a shrine at St Peter's Church, in Drogheda's West Street.
His head, if my memory is right, was preserved and encased in a glass jar close to one of the confession boxes and was quite scary. One of my sisters, out of squeamishness, refused to come in, and when we emerged we would frighten her by howling and contorting our faces to show what he looked like - before being whacked by the nearest adult.
Although getting through Drogheda is currently a frustrating driving experience, you will be able to totally avoid it by this time next year when the new bypass is completed and even fewer kids will know about or get to see Oliver Plunkett's head. School trips to St Peter's are something that cross-border friendship bodies are unlikely to fund.
Finally, after Drogheda the town of Balbriggan has now been bypassed. Coming through here on a bus-run the old story would be told again and again of how the Black and Tans arrested two local men and bayoneted them to death, and sacked and burned twenty-five houses in reprisal for the IRA killing of an RIC Detective Inspector in 1920.
Motorways are great. They get us from A to B - but they bypass all the local rich history.
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison