The Gaelic League of Pittsburgh
Conradh na Gaeilge Craobh Bhaile Phitt
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The Gaelic League of Pittsburgh
Conradh na Gaeilge Craobh Bhaile Phitt
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| "ZORRO FROM WEXFORD? "About a year and a half ago, a couple of newspapers devoted some space to claims that Zorro - as in 'the mark of' - was from the south east of Ireland. We meant to mention it, but never quite got round to it. "A certain Fabio Troncarelli, Professor of History at Italy's Viterbo University, apparently found "detailed proof" in the Vatican's Inquisition archives. He discovered that Zorro, the masked Robin Hood of Mexico was in fact a bloke from Wexford called William Lamport. "According to the Inquisition records, Lamport born to a well-off Irish family in 1615, and educated by the Jesuits in Dublin and London. After making himself distinctly unpopular for his anti-English opinions, he cleared off to sea, and hooked up with some pirates. From our understanding of Wexford during this period, meeting up with pirates would have a simple enough matter - piracy seems to have fuelled the local economy. In his early twenties, Lamport ended up in Spain, where he became known as 'Guillen Lombardo'. "After Lamport fought with Spain in the war against France, he came to the attention of Duke of Olivares, chief minister at the court of Philip IV of Spain. He fell from grace, and fled to Mexico after a scandal involving a Spanish noblewoman. It really was a case of out of the frying pan, and into the fire; the Inquisition accused him of conspiring against Spain. His alleged plans involved freeing the slaves and setting himself up as king. After several bouts of imprisonment, they eventually toasted him at the stake... but true to form, Lamport got the last laugh, and strangled himself with the rope that had been used to secure him to the stake. " They then had several links that didn't work for me, but this one did: "The Real Zorro http://home.earthlink.net/~rggsibiba/html/sib/sib6.html " We are also told that... "History Ireland - the current issue has an article on Lamport (we have to get our hands on it) http://www.historyireland.com/magazine/current.html " There you have it, but for genealogical contacts to Zorro check in with any other Irish list -- he doesn't appear to have been very Scotch-Irish. Even the Inquisition knows more about him than ourselves. According to McLysaght, the lad was old English. Lampert is a County Wexford variant of Lambert. Lambert is numerous and of English origin, long settled in south-east Leinster. Linda Merle
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