UNHAPPY CORK.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 14 October 1922, Page 10

UNHAPPY CORK.

PREDESTINED MARK FOR.

MARAUDERS.

There are certain Continental citieswhich have a melancholy celebrity on

account of their troubles., the siegea they have stood, the .sacks they have suffered, the changes of fortune they have seen. But there are not many :>f them which could show a record sadder than that of Cork, says a writer in the Manchester Guardian. Cork's position laid the place open, from th«» first, to all manner of marauders. Cork, with its "manic good receptacles or harboroughs for ships," was a predestinated mark for the Danes, and they harried it continually till it occurred to them that it would be a, good "outpost of empire," and they established themselves there. But the Irish were not easily beaten, and a long series of struggles, barbarously conducted, ended in the eviction of the Dane.. Then )eame Strongbow's invasion, but Cork was no safe city, as may be gathered from a charter of Edward rV. o in which it is mentioned that though there had been eleven parish churches in the city and suburbs "the said churches and suburbs, by reason of the wars of the Irish enemies and English rebels, were burned and laid waste for fifteen years past." Cork was in trouble again through its reception of Perkin Warbeck, and in 1499 the Mayor was hanged and quartered witE Waroeck at Tyburn. Under Queen Elizabeth the city was still troubled, and we have the Mayor describing it as "environed about with Irishmen, mucE annoyed jon the land and lett of our merchandise." Sickness and famine wrought havoc. "1 hare /been s|n .two 'towns besieged'," wrote St. Leger, "and never found like scarcity as there is here.'' In 1622 "the Cittie of Cork was consumed as suddenly and. horribly as the citties of jSodome and Gomorrah by a great fire —to the utter ruine and consumption of a rich and prosperous cittie;'*' In 1690 came the storm of the city by Marlborough. .