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"The Curse of Cromwell...!"

So that, on the subject of the wrongs of Ireland and on Oliver Cromwell, the little old man was as eloquent as was Miss Stuart on those of the Stuart Kings, and on the noble Loyalist lords and ladies persecuted and slain by the Monstrous Regicide.

Illiterate and otherwise ignorant as Houlihan was, he had a remarkably detailed knowledge of the true story of the brutish slaughter of the inhabitants of his native town of Drogheda, after Cromwell had taken it by storm; the tale of the wanton slaying of innocent defenceless men, women, and children; and of the savage martyrdom of the priests. About similar dreadful deeds in Wexford and other scenes of massacre he knew, and to him there was no more bloodstained monster in all history than Oliver Cromwell, the creature whose accursed name ranked even before that of a Pharaoh, a Herod or a Nero.

About Attila and Genghis Khan, Houlihan had never heard, but had he read of their lives and doings, the sinister light that illuminates their names would have paled to the dullest glow beside that which kept the name of Cromwell for ever burning. Burning in Hell.