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HISTORY
WRITE AROUND IRELAND
The Siege of Castlecuffe
The following was kindly trasncribed by Máirtín D'Alton from Seosamh MacCába's book, 'Dúthaí Uí Ríagáin' (Imperial Print, 1967)
'In the early 1640's during the confederate wars 1641 -49 the O Dunnes
of Ui Riagain led by Captain Daniel Dunne (Dónal óg)
and Edward Dunne were up in arms for Owen Roe and Ireland. Daniel
on whose head was a price of £400 no small sum in those days, took
by strategem the castle of Baile na Sagart. He brought from
a distance a straight well trimmed and suitable coloured tree trunk drawn
by eight horses, placed it on a strategic hillock, and directed on the castle,
demanded of the Cooteites immediate unconditional surrender or else he would
show no mercy. After a short parley Daniel chivalrously granted thier urgent
request to be allowed depart peacefully unarmed to Birr where they could
find refuge in that town, then Governed by Sydney Coote a relation
of Charles.
The O Dunnes took possession of the castle also a great booty of arms and
ammunition household goods harnesses and anything worth taking. They then
burned the castle whose ruins are there to tell the tale.
Locally it used to be said that Castle Cuffe was blown up by Cromwell. No,
Donal Og Dunne, guerilla leader, bombarded it with his powerful four yoke
home manufactured piece of artillery about seven years before Cromwell set
foot in Erin about 1649. That big gun must have caused great explosions
of Irish laughter still in fact reverberating, while the welkin rang to
the ancient resounding war cry 'Mullach Abú'.
My Notes on Above.
Seosamh Mac Caba was principal of Clonad National school from 1907 to 1948
and compiled the book from a variety of sources, including local.
Ballynasaggart was the old name of the district. It seems that a memory
of the resentment caused by Sir Charles Coote erecting his ultra-modern
house in the middle of O Dunne lands, which were not part of the Plantation
of Leix and Offaly, and had survived relatively intact as a Gaelic tuath,
still
lingered in Mac Cabas' time. The broad mullioned windows of Castle Cuffe
would have been unlikely to survive a cannon assault for any length of time.
It would have been customary to allow the garrison to depart with their
arms, not unarmed as mentioned above. It would be interesting to check the
Commonwealth lists of 1650-51 to see what happenned to Donal Og Dunne, Mac
Caba doesnt say, but given the £400 bounty, and the character of Sir
Charles Coote, it was unlikely Donal Og would have survived to boast about
his actions.