Finding a Title

I was several years into researching and writing the first of my two books on Irish history without a title. The horror of the "Great Irish Famine" proved difficult to capture in a few pithy words. For 6 years in the middle of the 19th century, the potato, the single source of food for millions of poor Irish men, women and children, was infected with a blight,which overnight could turn healthy food to a black and stinking heap.

Thousands upon thousands died, sometimes shut away in their hovels, sometimes lying unburied along lanes to become food for animals. A few found refuge in the prison-like poor houses created by an act of the British Parliament. Whole sections of the south and west of Ireland went quiet, as those who had the money to escape fled to ports to escape to England, Canada or America. Many of these refugees died in deadly storms on the Atlantic or of disease during the dangerous voyage.

My delete button removed dozens of failed effort. One morning, I was looking for some information in an Irish history when I saw a footnote that solved my problem. I discovered the phrase, "Dwelling place of dragons." It was the story behind the author of that phrase that convinced me I had indeed been given a special gift.

Ipswich, the small historic town that has been home for several decades, was founded in 1634 by Puritan settlers fleeing persecution in England. The Puritans were determined to create a civic society that matched their religious beliefs. So each new settlement needed a Puritan minister to ensure that their principles would be carefully taught and rigorously enforced. The first minister dispatched to Ipswich was Rev. Nathaniel Ward. He lived just a few minute's walk from my house.

Rev. Ward had other talents that proved very helpful to the new Puritan colony. These were religious pilgrims, now facing the challenge of creating a government. Rev. Ward had been a lawyer before becoming a minister, so he was called upon to help create the new government. He wrote a document called the "Body of Liberties," which codified the rights that citizens should have under the new government. It later became the base for the Massachusetts constitution. He also wrote one of the first books published in the new colony, "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam."

When the Puritans in England seized power two decades later, Rev. Ward decided to risk the ocean voyage, returning  to England in 1646. So he was living in England when Oliver Cromwell took his Puritan army to Ireland in 1649. This powerful force stormed ashore near Dundalk, laying waste to the town and murdering the opposing forces and many of the civilians who had sought refuge there.

While Cromwell headed south with his main army, he dispatched Robert Venables with a force of 5000 north to take the east coast of Ulster. After conquering Dundalk, they headed east to Carlingford where they attacked some of the ancient castles there. The next day, they conquered Newry without a struggle. The major battle of the campaign took place at Lisnagarvey, near Lisburn. There Venable and his forces defeated an army of Scotch Covenenters. The victors slaughtered many of the fleeing Royalists. Carrickfergus fell without a battle, and Cromwell controlled eastern Ulster.

Rev. Ward was a great supporter of the Cromwell invasion of Ireland. Though he had been supportive of human rights in Massachusetts, he was less concerned about Irish right. In 1647, he exhorted Cromwell to undertake an invasion of Ireland, to make it a total wasteland of ruined buildings and dead Irishmen. The ruin he wished for Ireland was very like the ruin that occurred during the famine. And I had my title. "Cursed be he who holdeth back the sword from blood; yea cursed be he that maketh not the sword stark drunk with Irish blood; who doth not recompense them double for their treachery to the English; but maketh them in heaps on heaps, and their country the dwelling place of dragons-an astonishment for nations.  Let not that eye look for pity, nor hand be spared, that pities or spares them; and let him be cursed that curseth them not bitterly."

From Jeremiah 51-37 in the King James version: "And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwellingplace for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant."