As recounted in the Táin Bó Cuailnge, it was the home of the Irish warrior Queen Medb (or Maeve), who was responsible for launching the Cattle Raid of Cooley.

The results of Archaeological Surveys carried out by John Waddell, of the National University of Ireland in Galway, are incorporated into the exhibition rooms at Cruachan Aí Heritage Centre.

The book "Rathcroghan, Co Roscommon: an archaeological and geophysical survey in a ritual landscape", by John Waddell, Joe Fenwick, and Kevin Barton, details significant and previously unknown features and information about the Celtic Royal Site of Connacht.

The recent excavation also revealed prehistoric levels that extend back into the Mesolithic period, before the time of farming and when hunting and gathering prevailed.

[citation needed] Tulsk was previously a parliamentary borough, one of three in County Roscommon from the period 1663 to 1800, and was a constituency represented in the Irish House of Commons.

He noted that on May Day he witnessed a scene ‘peculiar to this locality’: It was that of ‘driving in all the black cattle from the surrounding plains to the great fort of Rathcroghan Mound, and bleeding them for the benefit of their health, while crowds of country people, having brought turf for firing, sat around and cooked the blood mixed with oaten meal, and when they could be procured, onions or scallions.

The inhabitants were incorporated by Charles II., in the fourteenth year of his reign, by the designation of the "Portreeve, Free Burgesses, and Commonalty of the Borough of Tulsk:" the charter also conferred the elective franchise, with power to hold a court of record and a weekly market.

Under this charter the corporation consisted of a portreeve, 15 free burgesses, and an indefinite number of freemen, assisted by two serjeants-at-mace and other officers appointed in the usual manner.

There are some remains of the ancient abbey, situated in a large cemetery which is still used as a burial-place; and also of the conventual buildings; but the chief feature is a double-arched doorway, divided in the centre by a round pillar, which is of elegant design and in good preservation.

What travellers may have seen is open to question, but this was at a time when Tulsk was particularly ravaged by poverty and suffered death and emigration on a large scale in subsequent years.

[4] In October 1903, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party John Redmond held a mass outdoor rally or "National Meeting" in Tulsk, for the people of County Roscommon.

Redmond arrived in the afternoon on a horse-drawn sidecar from Roscommon town, where he had spent the previous night, after a train journey from Dublin.

Tulsk was no different from most other British and Irish villages and towns during World War One, in that it contributed to the Allied effort of resisting the Central Powers' threat to European stability.

John McGrath, from Tulsk, as published in Ireland's Memorial Records, is registered as a Private in the North Staffordshire Regiment – 12th Battalion – and was killed in action in France on 28 July 1918.

He served in the Leinster Regiment, died of post-traumatic stress disorder injuries sustained during battle while in France, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

Two other men, Henry Armitage and William Garry were RIC officers in Tulsk during that same war and went to the front after an outdoor send-off in the village (from contemporaneous newspaper reports).

Their fate is unknown, like that of half of the men who died in World War I (over 9 million), scattered as they are beneath the green fields of mainland Europe.

Along with two suspected Germans arrested on suspicion of "some evil design", over the Tarmonbarry bridge, the following was also printed: During the Irish War of Independence, on 14 November 1920 George Kelly, who was a shop keeper in Tulsk, drove to Roscommon town in his truck to collect goods for his store.

His death was just one in a total of 58 fatalities associated with the Irish revolution in county Roscommon from the years 1917 – 1921 (from 'Counting Terror' by Eunan O'Halpin in 'Terror in Ireland 1916–1923' ed.

[citation needed] Irish folk singer Christy Moore, in the title track of his Welcome to the Cabaret album, describes Tulsk as being like "hell".