CROMWELL’S TOUR OF IRELAND “TO HELL OR TO CONNAUGHT” A play with music By TOM O’BRIEN (c) 2017 Tom O’Brien The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, journal or magazine. First printing Performing rights Applications for performance in excerpt or in full should be sent to:
[email protected] Published by tomtom-theatre characters Cromwell Hastings Wandering Minstrel Preacher Emir Eithne Various Soldiers Oliver Cromwell landed at Ringsend, Dublin on the 15th August 1649, with orders to put down the Catholic rebellion. He had the might of the English Parliament and his New Model army behind him, and he was fresh from his success in the English Civil War, where one of his last acts was to oversee the beheading of King Charles. And he believed he had God on his side. He stayed in Ireland a mere nine months, but by then he had already decided there was only one place for the troublesome Papists - Hell or Connaught! We see his journey through Ireland through his own eyes, those of his Puritan soldiers, and of two girls, Emir and Eithne, who, having been captured at the battle of Drogheda, are now being forced to work in the kitchens before being shipped off as slaves to the West Indies.