{"id":484452,"date":"2026-05-14T14:55:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T14:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/484452\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T14:55:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T14:55:12","slug":"cork-city-council-to-consider-tiny-statue-honouring-mosquito-linked-to-oliver-cromwells-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/484452\/","title":{"rendered":"Cork City Council to consider tiny statue honouring mosquito linked to Oliver Cromwell\u2019s death"},"content":{"rendered":"

A statue to commemorate the mosquito that may have killed Oliver Cromwell by infecting him with malaria in Cork<\/a> is to be considered by Cork City Council.<\/p>\n

It would be \u201cthe world\u2019s smallest public statue,\u201d and could be erected on an empty plinth outside Cork City Hall, Green Party councillor Oliver Moran said.<\/p>\n

Mr Moran suggested erecting the statue as part of Cork City Council<\/a>\u2019s public art scheme.<\/p>\n

He has proposed that Cork City Council \u201cerect a statue to the mosquito or midge that bit Oliver Cromwell during the siege of the city, later causing his death through \u2018Cork fever\u2019 (malaria), and that this statue shall be \u2018the world\u2019s smallest public statue\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oliver Cromwell<\/a> is known for his brutal military campaign in Ireland in the 1600s.<\/p>\n

\u2018World\u2019s smallest public statue\u2019<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Cllr Moran said: \u201cWhether the midge that bit Oliver Cromwell is a real thing, or a legend or a folk story from Cork, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we can be fairly sure he died of malaria and that he contracted it on his campaigns. That could have been in Cork.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mr Moran said the novelty of having the smallest statue in the world could attract visitors to Cork.<\/p>\n

He said artists have been sending him drawings they made in the past of the famous midge, including some that were commissioned.<\/p>\n

\"OliverOliver Cromwell is known for his brutal military campaign in Ireland in the 1600s. File picture<\/p>\n

Cork City Council has been developing a public art strategy.<\/p>\n

However, Cllr Moran said suggestions for the scheme have largely centred on men from Ireland\u2019s revolutionary history, particularly from the period between 1916 and 1926.<\/p>\n

While such suggestions are valid, he said he has been working to bring forward more novel ideas for the public art scheme \u201cto 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other public art proposals\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first suggestion Cllr 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is mind-blowing, and which is genuine, actual history, is that what we all know about hell was invented in Cork.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe story of what he experienced, was written down, spread across Europe, and that informed our current ideas of hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ItIt would be \u201cthe world\u2019s smallest public statue,\u201d and could be erected on an empty plinth outside Cork City Hall, Green Party councillor Oliver Moran said. Picture: Darragh Kane<\/p>\n

Cllr Moran previously brought forward the motion that: \u201cCork 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cUpon 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis 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\u2019s near-death vision of hell in the city of Cork.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mr Moran is also putting forward more contemporary suggestions for the public art scheme.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is considered to be the greatest folk singer in the Irish Traveller tradition ever recorded,\u201d Cllr Moran said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe lived the last 20 years of her life in Spring Lane, between 1989 and 2009. \u201cYou 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cllr 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe response to all these from the executive will be: \u2018we are working on our public art strategy and will consider this and subject to funding.’<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd on that last line, already some of my council colleagues have said, \u2018surely this [funding consideration] can’t apply in the case of the midge? Surely we can afford a statue to a midge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A statue to commemorate the mosquito that may have killed Oliver Cromwell by infecting him with malaria in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[781,9,10,42,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-484452","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-cork-news","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-cork-city-council","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116573511849305414","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}