On the Banks of Mulroy Bay
by Eleanor R. Long-Wilgus
$29.95, hardcover, 302 pages
Publication Date: May 2005
ISBN 1-59715-000-2

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"On the morning of 2 April 1878, while traveling…between his Manorvaughan domicile and the town of Milford in Co. Donegal, Ireland, William Sidney Clements, the Third Earl of Leitrim…was ambushed and killed."

Though this exulting beginning sounds much like a fictional murder mystery, it is actually a riveting mystery about the assassination of William Sydney Clements, the Third Earl of County Leitrim, Ireland. His assassination was apparently an end to his "Tyranny of Landlordism," and it also led to the capsizing of widespread abuse of tenants by their landlords.

On the Banks of Mulroy Bay compiles, with great detail and thought, a plethora of remembrances, songs, and stories of folks’ experiences with the notorious William Sydney Clements, the Third Earl of Leitrim. The authors, D.K. Wilgus and Eleanor R. Long-Wilgus, convey inherited songs and accounts in the voices of people who met personally, or knew all-too-well about the tyrannical Clements. As with all folklore, many of the narratives have been reinterpreted over the years, a fundamental truth always underlying them, which ultimately serves to make Mulroy Bay a powerful chronicle of times past.

Told in song as well as spoken verse and eyewitness accounts, we are launched headlong into a whodunit of facts and history mixed with a healthy dose of fable. It will fascinate any reader to learn that many of the sources for Mulroy Bay are current residents of Counties Leitrim and Donegal, whom the authors met during their four excursions to Ireland.