Walter Love's 'Bloody Massacre': an unfinished study in Irish cultural history, 1641–1963

Abstract

This article is based on the unpublished papers of the American historian Walter D. Love, retained in the Department of Manuscripts, Trinity College Dublin. Prior to his death in 1966, Love was writing a study of the contested historiography of the Irish rebellion of 1641. This article attempts to reconstruct Love's broad overview of the significance of 1641 from the seventeenth century to the twentieth and his efforts to overcome the methodological problems that the writing of such a study posed. Arising from this, it also attempts to reconstruct the framework of the book that Love was writing at the time of his death. In doing so, this article is intended to contribute to ongoing debates about the nature and significance of the rebellion by examining Love's pioneering but sadly unfinished attempt to examine its legacy. Introduction At some point in the early 1960s an American historian of Ireland, Walter D. Love, read The leopard, Guiseppi de Lampedusa's epic novel of the Risorgimento. In it was a passage he deemed worthy of recording: Nowhere has truth so short a life as in Sicily; a fact has scarcely happened five minutes before its genuine kernel has vanished, been camouflaged, embellished, disfigured, annihilated by imagination and self interest; shame, fear, generosity, malice, opportunism, charity, all the passions, good as well as evil, fling themselves on the fact and tear it to pieces; very soon it has vanished altogether.1 * Author's e-mail: gibneyjf@gmail.com doi: 1 0.33 18/PRIAC.2010. 110.217 I would like to acknowledge the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences for funding the research upon which this article is based. I wish to thank Jane Maxwell of the Department of Manuscripts, Trinity College Dublin, for her assistance with the Love papers. I would also like to thank Christopher Maginn and the anonymous referee for their comments on an earlier draft. At the time of this article going to print, it was not possible to establish the identity of copyright heirs to Love's literary estate. I wish to gratefully acknowledge the Board of Trinity College for granting permission to quote from the Love papers. 1 Trinity College Dublin (TCD), MSS 7,236-8, fol. 244. The citation from the relevant edition is Guiseppe Di Lampedusa, The leopard (London, 1960), 250. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Vol. 110C, 217-237 © 2010 Royal IrishAcademy This content downloaded from 40.77.167.82 on Sat, 28 May 2016 06:11:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms