Cromwell mosquito statue proposal. Will City Hall bite?

A statue to commemorate the mosquito that may have killed Oliver Cromwell by infecting him with malaria in Cork is to be considered by Cork City Council.

It would be “the world’s smallest public statue,” and could be erected on an empty plinth outside Cork City Hall, Green Party councillor Oliver Moran said.

Mr Moran suggested erecting the statue as part of Cork City Council’s public art scheme.

He has proposed that Cork City Council “erect a statue to the mosquito or midge that bit Oliver Cromwell during the siege of the city, later causing his death through ‘Cork fever’ (malaria), and that this statue shall be ‘the world’s smallest public statue’.” 

Oliver Cromwell is known for his brutal military campaign in Ireland in the 1600s.

Speaking to The Echo, Mr Moran said: “Whether the midge that bit Oliver Cromwell is a real thing, or a legend or a folk story from Cork, I don’t know.

“But we can be fairly sure he died of malaria and that he contracted it on his campaigns. That could have been in Cork.” 

Mr Moran said the novelty of having the smallest statue in the world could attract visitors to Cork.

He said artists have been sending him drawings they made in the past of the famous midge, including some that were commissioned.

Public art strategy

Cork City Council has been developing a public art strategy.

However, Mr Moran said suggestions for the scheme have largely centred on men from Ireland’s revolutionary history, particularly from the period between 1916 and 1926.

While such suggestions are valid, he said he has been working to bring forward more novel ideas for the public art scheme “to broaden that discussion when it comes to the public arts strategy and to make us stand back and look at the full thousand-year history of the city.”

The first suggestion Mr Moran made for a commemoration through the public art scheme was for the knight who, he said, changed the Western conception of hell after suffering a hangover following a drinking binge in Cork in the 1100s.

“What is mind-blowing, and which is genuine, actual history, is that what we all know about hell was invented in Cork.

“So when we think of demons with pitchforks and lakes of fire, where that comes from was a knight in the middle of the 1100s who went on a drinking spree in Cork.

“He got sick from the drink, was dead to the world for three days, and when he woke up in the horrors, he recounted what he had seen in his vision for the previous three days, and it was of lakes of fire, he was in hell, there were demons with pitchforks chewing on people.

“The story of what he experienced, was written down, spread across Europe, and that informed our current ideas of hell.”

Mr Moran previously brought forward the motion that: “Cork City Council will erect a statue or other monument to the Irish knight Tnugdalus, who in 1148, after drinking to excess in the city of Cork, collapsed into a death-like coma that lasted three days.

“Upon waking, he recounted the horrors he experienced in the afterlife, providing the seminal medieval account of hell, including lakes of boiling pitch, shrieking demons with pitchforks and sinners roasted and chewed in monstrous mouths.

“His horrors reshaped how the Western world imagines eternal damnation and became the raw material that gave Europe its most enduring nightmares, influencing art, literature and culture to the present day, all based on one man’s near-death vision of hell in the city of Cork.” 

More contemporary suggestions

Mr Moran is also putting forward more contemporary suggestions for the public art scheme.

He has called for Cork City Council to erect a statue or other monument to commemorate Mary Delaney, a street singer and Traveller who was originally from Tipperary but lived in Spring Lane, an overcrowded and controversial halting site in Cork city.

“She is considered to be the greatest folk singer in the Irish Traveller tradition ever recorded,” Cllr Moran said.

“She lived the last 20 years of her life in Spring Lane, between 1989 and 2009.

“You could have someone like her commemorated in a statue simply by virtue of her artistry. But when you also consider that desperation that we know exists in Spring Lane, the opportunities people have and people miss.

"And to remind people not to judge a person from where they come from and the opportunities people miss. We as a society and a city could be missing out on somebody who could be the next greatest artist of their genre.” 

Mr Moran said that, having already suggested statues to Mary Delaney and Knight Tnugdalus, he knows what the response to the latest midge proposal will be.

“The response to all these from the executive will be: ‘We are working on our public art strategy and will consider this and subject to funding.'

“And on that last line, already some of my council colleagues have said, ‘surely this [funding consideration] can't apply in the case of the midge? Surely we can afford a statue to a midge.”