A Green Party councillor in Cork wants the Irish city to honor the mosquito blamed for killing Oliver Cromwell, the English Lord Protector whose conquest of Ireland made him a reviled figure there. Oliver Moran tabled the motion at a Cork City Council meeting on May 12, proposing what he describes as the world's smallest public statue, to be mounted on an empty plinth outside City Hall.
The motion reads:
STATUE TO THE MOSQUITO OR MIDGE THAT BIT OLIVER CROMWELL
'That Cork City Council will erect a statue to the mosquito or midge that bit Oliver Cromwell during his siege of the city, later causing his death through 'Cork fever' (malaria); and that this statue shall be the 'world's smallest public statue'.'
(Proposer: Cllr. O. Moran 26/266)
Cromwell's military campaign included a siege of Cork, and he died in London in September 1658 of malaria, believed to have been contracted in Ireland. Cork lore narrows that down to a single insect bite in the city, though Moran concedes the folkloric quality of the tale.
Moran told CBC Radio host Nora Young the idea came from a social media thread about Cromwell, in which an English commenter wondered aloud why Cork had not already honoured the midge. "I said, 'Well, hold my beer. That's a great idea for a public monument,'" Moran said.
The idea came from a conversation on social media. Very often you would have people who are studying Cromwell, primarily from an English perspective, and they would know that he had visited Ireland, that there had been a campaign in Ireland, and then would often come to social media asking questions of Irish people, wondering, "Well, what are your views?" And it can often be a grab-the-popcorn moment and go to the comment section. And that's what I did on this occasion, too. And within the comments was a post saying that the person responding was surprised that the people of Cork had not put up a statue to the midge that had bitten and eventually led to the death of Cromwell. And I said, "Well, hold my beer. That's a great idea for a public monument."
The proposal lands on fertile ground, not least due to the special loathing Irish folk have for Cromwell: massacres at Drogheda and Wexford took thousands of lives and and a "settlement" took vast tracts of land. Moran has form for offbeat motions, including one last year seeking recognition for Tnugdalus, a 12th-century Cork knight whose hallucinated tour of hell shaped European depictions of damnation.
Cllr Moran acknowledged to T+D that while his latest motion made headlines, the memes and publicity are not the motivation behind his motions.
"There's a lot of interest in more public art and commemorating the city's history. The Arts Office is working on a public art strategy for that reason.
"Something I noticed, however, is that a lot of proposals coming from members of Cork City Council are to remember the heroes from the revolutionary period. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's just one decade in the thousand or more year history of the city."
"I've been keeping an eye out for the more unusual or over-looked people to remember."
The councillor argues the statue would cost little and draw outsized attention. If built, it would join a small global club of micro-monuments competing for the smallest-statue title, a category with no formal arbiter but plenty of tourist mileage. It would have to be tiny indeed to beat David Lindon's tiny smiley, though the latter was not a puritan protofascist fanatic the English were eager to move on from (if not from Ireland itself.)
Proposal at Cork City Council for a statue to commemorate the mosquito that bit Oliver Cromwell [sluggerotoole.com]
