Re: Re: Discrepancy in Eleanor Plunkett

[Bonnie Shaljean]

The old harpers clearly played it that way too, though Fairy’s point about the “folk process” is a good one and is certainly true.

O’Sullivan points out that Eleanor was the last survivor of her family, and quotes the line of Carolan’s verse (in Irish) attesting to this, which he translates as: “Though there survives in this land / Only you of your kindred.”

What exactly happened to the Plunketts is not clear, and after extensive research he could not verify a rather lurid story printed in a 1916 collection of poems which says that “thirty persons of that family shut themselves up in the castle of Castlecome [sic], two miles from Robertstown [County Meath], which were destroyed by boiling water.”

O’Sullivan’s comment on this tale is: “I have been unable to get to the bottom of this.