THE START OF FENIANISM.
In these times preceding the Phœnix arrests--from 1852 to 1858--the
time of the Sadlier and Keogh Tenant Right movement, the time of the
Crimean war, and the time of the Indian mutiny, the Irish National
cause was in a swoon. But England was playing one of her tricks,
endeavoring to get the people to put trust in Parliamentary agitation
and petitions to Parliament, for the redress of their grievances. Men
who had no faith in these petitions would join in, saying, “We will try
once more; but this is to be the last.” I suppose a dozen Tenant-Right
bills have been given to Ireland since 1852; but to-day (1897), England
and England’s landlords have the right to root out the Irish people
still, and mercilessly do they exercise that right--so much so, that
the population of Ireland is two millions less to-day than it was in
1852.
When James Stephens came to Skibbereen in May, 1858, and started the
Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, we commenced to work in that line of
labor, and we were not long working, when a great change was noticeable
in the temper of the people. In the cellars, in the woods, and on
the hillsides, we had our men drilling in the night-time, and wars
and rumors of wars were on the wings of the wind. The lords and the
landlords were visibly becoming alarmed. No wonder, for their tenants
who used to flock to Tenant-Right meetings cared very little about
attending such meetings now. It has been said--it is said to-day by
some men of the cities, that the farmers were opposed to the movement.
I could not say that; I could say to the contrary, because I enrolled
into the movement many of the most influential farmers in the parishes
of Kilcoe, Aughadown, Caheragh, Drimoleague, Drinagh, Kilmacabea,
Myross and Castlehaven. Dan McCartie and Morty Moynahan, two other
“Centres” did the same. We set our eyes on the men who could carry
their districts, in case of a rising--just as England sets her eye on
the same class of men to-day, and swears them in as “New Magistrates.”
It is to counteract this Fenian work of ours that England is now giving
the “Commission of the Peace” to the sons and brothers of the men that
we had in the Fenian organization. I could here name a dozen of these
new magistrates that I met in Ireland a few years ago, whose fathers
and whose brothers were with us in the Fenian movement of thirty odd
years ago. I will not name them, as it may be said I was unwarrantably
saying something to their injury. But England knows them, and knows
with what aim she swore them into her service. She knows that Pat and
Jerrie Cullinane were in prison with me in the Phœnix time, and she
knows why it is that she makes their brother, Henry, a magistrate.
She knows that William O’Sullivan, of Kilmallock, was put to prison
by her in the Fenian times, and she knows why it is that she makes a
magistrate of his son, John, who presided at my lecture at Kilmallock
two years ago. And, sad I am to-day (July 12, ’98,) as I am reading
this proof-sheet, to read in the Irish newspapers, that John O’Sullivan
of Kilmallock died last week. English work of this kind I found all
over Ireland when I was over there lately. In the district of Belfast
I found eleven of those new magistrates whose families, thirty years
ago, gave volunteers to the Fenian movement. I do not say they are
worse Irishmen now than they were thirty years ago; but England has
sworn them into her service; has “bound them to the peace.” It is not
for love of them, or love of their race or religion she has done so.
She has done it to wean them away from the National movement, and to
paralyze that movement. “Beware of the cockatrice! trust not the wiles
of the serpent; for perfidy lurks in his folds”--So spoke the Bishop of
Ross, when the Sassenach was hanging him at Carrigadrohid. But we are
taking little heed of his advice; the Sassenach is getting the better
of us every way. I will now return to my story.
Every Sunday, Morty Moynahan, Dan McCartie and myself would drive
to some country chapel, and attend mass. After mass we got into
conversation with the trustworthy men of the place, and we generally
planted the seed of our mission there. One Sunday, going to Clonakilty,
we fell in with Father Tim Murray, of Ross, who was going to say mass
at the chapel of Lissavard. We went to mass there. We were in the
gallery. Father Tim was preaching in Irish. I was startled, as a man
sitting by me, said in a loud voice, “Anois, athair Teige, ni doith
liom gur ceart e sin”--“Now Father Tim I don’t think that’s right.”
The priest had to address him personally, and tell him he’d have to
go out in the yard to hear mass unless he held his tongue. He was a
harmless simpleton, well known in the parish. After mass, McCartie,
Moynahan and I went to Clonakilty. I had made an appointment to meet
a farmer from the country, a cousin of mine. I settled matters with
him. There are magistrates in his family now. Then, there were in the
town two of the men of ’48 we meant to call upon--John Callanan and
Maxwell Irwin. We went to John Callanan’s house, and he was not at
home; we went to Maxwell Irwin’s, and he was not at home; he had gone
to Crookhaven to attend the auction of a cargo of a shipwreck; so the
little girl told me who came to the door after I had telephoned on
the bright brass knocker outside. She was a pretty little girl, too,
about twelve years of age, with twinkling eyes, and red rosy cheeks and
coal-black hair. She is my wife to-day. Five or six years afterward, I
met Mr. Irwin’s entire family--not for their welfare, I fear, as the
boys of it found their way to prison and to exile through acquaintance
with me.
Clonakilty is twenty miles distant from Skibbereen. That visit I
made there with Dan McCartie and Morty Moynahan to start the I. R.
B. Organization was in 1858. Thirty-six years after, in 1894, I
was invited to give a lecture there. Dan O’Leary, one of the new
magistrates, presided at the lecture. He, too, died a few weeks
ago. After the lecture there was a big supper at the hotel. That
cousin of mine whom I initiated into the I. R. B. movement in 1858
sat near me at the supper table. We talked of old times of course,
but the old times are changed; one of his family is also one of the
new magistrates. In those old times the magistracy was a monopoly
in control of the Cromwellian plunderers of the Irish people, such
as the Beechers, the Townsends, the Frenches, the Hungerfords, the
Somervilles, the lords Bandon, Bantry, and Carbery, with a few of the
Irish themselves who became renegades to race and religion, and thus
came into sole possession of some of the lands of the clans--such as
the O’Donovans, the O’Gradys, the O’Briens and others, who became more
English than the English themselves. I remember old Sandy O’Driscoll,
of Skibbereen; he was a Catholic, but he had the character and the
appearance of being as big a tyrant as any Cromwellian landlord in the
barony of Carbery. That much is as much as need be said at present on
that subject.
On the subject of Fenianism I have heard many Irishmen in America speak
about the large sums of American money that were spent in organizing
the movement in Ireland, England and Scotland. I traveled these three
countries in connection with the organization of the movement from
1858 to 1865, and I can truthfully say, that in the early years of
our endeavor, “the men at home,” spent more of their own money out of
their own pockets than was contributed altogether by the whole Fenian
organization of America. Hugh Brophy, one of the Dublin “Centres”
is in Melbourne; John Kenealy, one of the Cork “Centres,” is in Los
Angeles--two extremely distant parts of the world--they will see what
I say, and they can bear testimony to the truth of my words.
Now, I’ll get out of this cross bohreen I got into, and get back
again to the main road of my story. As a funeral was passing through
Skibbereen to the Abbey graveyard one day in ’58, I saw two men whom I
thought would be great men in our movement; they were looked upon as
the leaders of the clan O’Driscoll and clan McCarthy, of the parishes
of Drinagh, Drimoleague and Caheragh. I got into the funeral procession
and talked with them the mile of the road out to the Abbey field, and
back again. We went into my house and had some dinner. In my bedroom I
pledged Corly-Batt, McCarthy-Sowney to work for the cause; somewhere
else I gave the pledge to Teige Oge O’Driscoll, of Doire-gclathach.
Each of them was about sixty years of age at the time. Teige Oge’s wife
was a McCarthy-Sowney, and Teige Oge’s sister was the wife of Finneen a
Rossa, the brother of my grandfather, Diarmad a Rossa. Then I met Teige
Oge’s eldest son, Conn, and I swore him in. Some dozen years ago I met
him in Natick or Holliston, Massachusetts, the father of a large family
of hearty sons and daughters.
The McCarthy-Sowney family are a noble Irish family; thoroughly hostile
to English rule in Ireland, however they are, or wherever they are.
If you are “on the run” from England in Ireland, no matter what you
are hunted for, you have shelter, and protection, and guardianship in
the house of a McCarthy-Sowney. Corly-Batt had a grinding mill on the
bank of the river, by the main road, between Drimoleague and Bantry;
in this mill was Johnnie O’Mahony, a grandson of his, about seventeen
years old; he swore in the grandson; and that grandson swore in all the
farmers’ sons who came to the mill with wheat and oats and barley. That
Johnnie O’Mahony is living somewhere around Boston now.
In the year 1864 I was living in Dublin, I came down to Skibbereen
on some business. As I was passing by Drimoleague--it was a fair-day
there--I went up to the fair field on the Rock, and as I got within
the field, a fight commenced. I knew all the men around, and all the
men around knew me. The two leaders of the fight were inside in the
middle of the crowd; they had a hold of each other; the sticks were up;
I rushed in; I caught hold of the two men--“Here,” said I, “this work
must stop; ’tis a shame for the whole of you to be going on this way.”
I glanced around as I spoke; the sticks were lowered, and the crowd
scattered.
That was one good thing the Fenian organization did in Ireland in
its day--it in a great measure broke up the faction-fights and the
faction-parties, and got the men of both sides to come together and
work in friendly brotherhood for the Irish cause. That, as much as
anything else, greatly alarmed the English government and its agents.