ROSSA’S RECOLLECTIONS.
1838 TO 1898.
CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, MANHOOD.
Customs, Habits and Manners of the Irish People.
ERINACH AND SASSENACH--CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT--ENGLISHMAN
AND IRISHMAN--ENGLISH
RELIGION--IRISH PLUNDER.
SOCIAL LIFE AND PRISON LIFE.
The Fenian Movement. Travels in Ireland, England,
Scotland and America.
By O’DONOVAN ROSSA
O’DONOVAN ROSSA,
MARINER’S HARBOR, N. Y.
1898.
COPYRIGHT
1898
O’DONOVAN ROSSA
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Cradle and the Weaning 5
II. At my Grandfather’s 10
III. My Schooldays 22
IV. Irish Fireside Story and History 35
V. The Emigrant Parting.--Carthy Spauniach 51
VI. The Gladstone Blackbird.--Many Features of Irish Life 61
VII. The Lords of Ireland 71
VIII. A Chapter on Genealogy 80
IX. “Repeal of the Union” 101
X. How England Starved Ireland 108
XI. The Bad Times: The “Good People.” Jillen Andy: Her
Coffinless Grave 119
XII. 1847 and 1848 130
XIII. The Scattering of My Family.--The Phœnix Society 141
XIV. Love and War and Marriage 151
XV. Doctor Jerrie Crowley, Doctor Anthony O’Ryan, Charles
Kickham, The Phœnix Society 177
XVI. The Start of Fenianism 199
XVII. Arrest of the Phœnix Men 206
XVIII. A Star-Chamber Trial 216
XIX. The McManus Funeral--James Stephens and John O’Mahony
visit Skibbereen--Fenianism Growing Strong 234
XX. The Struggle against the Enemy 251
XXI. James Stephens and John O’Mahony 269
XXII. A Letter of much Import, Written by James Stephens,
in the Year 1861 282
XXIII. John O’Mahony, Wm. Sullivan, Florry Roger O’Sullivan,
Brian Dillon, Jack Dillon, Michael O’Brien, C. U.
O’Connell, James Mountaine, and others. 300
XXIV. Administering Relief to Poor People.--A Fight with
the Landlords. 320
XXV. John O’Donovan, LL. D., Editor of the Annals of the
Four Masters. 332
XXVI. My first Visit to America.--My Mother, John O’Mahony,
Thomas Francis Meagher, Robert E. Kelly, and his Son
Horace R. Kelly, Michael Corcoran, P. J. Downing, P. J.
Condon, William O’Shea, and Michael O’Brien the
Manchester Martyr. 378
XXVII. Great-Grandfather Thomas Crimmins.--His Recollections
of the Men of ’98, and other Men. 391
ROSSA’S RECOLLECTIONS.
Sixty Years of an Irishman’s Life.
CHAPTER I.
THE CRADLE AND THE WEANING.
In the Old Abbey field of Ross Carbery, County of Cork, is the old
Abbey Church of St. Fachtna. Some twenty yards south of the church is
the tomb of Father John Power, around which tomb the people gather
on St. John’s eve, “making rounds” and praying for relief from their
bodily infirmities.
On the tombstone it is recorded that Father Power died on the 10th
of August, 1831. I was at his funeral; I heard my mother say she was
“carrying” me that day. It is recorded on the parish registry that I
was baptized on the 10th of September, 1831; that my god-father was
Jerrie Shanahan, and my god-mother Margaret O’Donovan. When I grew
up to boyhood I knew her as “Aunty Peg.” She was the wife of Patrick
O’Donovan “Rua,” and was the sister of my mother’s father, Cornelius
O’Driscoll. Jerrie Shanahan’s mother was Julia O’Donovan Rossa--my
father’s uncle’s daughter. She is buried in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Her
granddaughter Shanahan is the mother of nine or ten children of the Cox
family, the shoe manufacturers of Rochester, N. Y., who by “clounas”
are connected with the family of ex-Congressman John Quinn of New York,
as John Quinn’s mother was the daughter of Denis Kane of Ross, whose
wife was the sister of John Shanahan. I don’t know if John Quinn knows
that the Coxes of Rochester are cousins of his; I don’t know would he
care to know that his mother’s first cousin, Jerrie Shanahan is my
second cousin, and my god-father. There were forty men of my name and
family in my native town when I was a boy; there is not a man or a boy
of my name in it now. One woman of the name lives as heritor of the old
family tomb in the Old Abbey field.
And that is the story of many another Irishman of the old stock.
Families scattered in death as well as in life; a father buried in
Ireland, a mother buried in Carolina, America; a brother buried in
New York, a brother buried in Pennsylvania, a sister buried in Staten
Island. The curse that scattered the Jews is not more destructive than
this English curse that scatters the Irish race, living and dead.
This place of my birth, Ross Carbery, is famed in Irish history as the
seat of learning in the early centuries. Shrines of St. Fachtna, holy
wells and holy places are numerous all around it. Distinction of some
kind--special good fortune or special misfortune--belongs to the life
of every one born there. It is the birthplace of Maurice J. Power, the
right-hand man of ex-President Grover Cleveland, in the city of New
York. It is the birthplace of Richard Croker, the right-hand man of the
Government of the Tammany Hall Society, in the city of New York.
Of the Fates that hover over my life I have no reason to complain. They
have mixed my fortunes; given me a strong constitution, a light heart,
and a light pocket, making my struggle for existence active enough to
keep the blood in a healthy state of circulation, fortifying me with
strength to stand firm under difficulties, and filling my mind with
strong hope in the future if I do all that I deem right in the present.
The Maurice J. Power in New York that I speak of is the same family of
Powers as the Father John Power at whose tomb the people pray to God
for relief from their infirmities. And the belief is that many have
obtained relief through their prayers there. I know that I have gone
through that Abbey field the day after a St. John’s eve, and I have
seen, propped up by stones, a pair of crutches that were left there by
a man who came into the field on those crutches the previous day. The
holy words say, “Faith will move mountains,” the whole world is the
temple of God, and the pilgrim cripple, full of faith, praying to Him
in that Abbey-field, became able to walk away without his crutches, and
leave them standing there as monuments of the miracle.
Father Jerrie Molony, the priest of the parish, discountenanced the
rush of people to Father Power’s tomb every St. John’s eve: he spoke
against it from the altar on Sundays. All to no use; the people came;
came in thousands. Of course, where people congregated in such
numbers, abuses began to grow; the votaries of sin came into his parish
as well as the votaries of prayer, and very probably the good priest
thought it better to stop the gathering altogether than have it made
the occasion of shame and scandal.
I will here leap some years ahead, to record my recollection of one St.
John’s eve that I was in Ross. It was in the year 1858.
James O’Mahony of Bandon wrote to me that he wished to meet me to have
a talk over Irish national affairs. He suggested that St. John’s eve
in Ross would be a good place, as crowds of people would be there, and
we would escape any prying notice. We met there that day. We had our
talk, and then we walked toward the Abbey field. The blind and the halt
and the lame were there, in every path and passage way, appealing for
alms--appealing mostly in the Irish language. We stood behind one man
who was sitting down, his bare ulcerated legs stretched out from him.
His voice was strong, and his language was beautiful. O’Mahony said he
never heard or read anything in the Irish language so beautiful. Taking
his notebook and pencil to note down the words of the appeal, some
traveling companion of the cripple’s told him that a man was taking
notes, and the cripple turned round and told us to go way. He wouldn’t
speak any more until we went away.
This James O’Mahony was a draper in Bandon; he was the brother of
Thaddeus O’Mahony who was a professor of the Irish language in Trinity
College, Dublin. He went to Australia in the year 1863. I hope he is
alive and happy there. With him went another comrade of mine, William
O’Carroll, who kept a bakery in North Main Street, Cork. They were
among the first men in the South of Ireland that joined the Stephens’
movement. It was James O’Mahony that first gave James Stephens the name
of Seabhac; shouk; hawk. The Shouk shoolach--the walking hawk--was a
name given in olden days to a banned wanderer. Stephens, at the start
of this organization, traveled much of Ireland on foot. A night he
stopped at my house in Skibbereen, I saw the soles of his feet red with
blisters.
This is a long leap I have taken in the chapter of “from the cradle to
the weaning”--a leap from 1831--the year I was born--to 1858, the year
I first met James Stephens. So I will have to leap back now, and talk
on from my childhood.
I must have been very fond of my mother, or my mother must have been
very fond of me, for I must have lived on her breast till I was up to
three years of age. I know she tried often to wean me from her; she
put me to sleep with one of the servant maids, and I remember well the
laugh my father and mother had at me next morning, when I heard her
telling them how often during the night I tried to get at her bosom. I
am more than three years older than my brother Conn, and I suppose it
was the advent of his coming that brought about the arrangement to have
me taken into the country to my grandfather’s place.