Rossa's Recollections, 1838 to 1898. Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa
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Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa
Rossa's Recollections, 1838 to 1898
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066201647
Table of Contents
ROSSA’S RECOLLECTIONS. Sixty Years of an Irishman’s Life.
CHAPTER I. THE CRADLE AND THE WEANING.
CHAPTER II. AT MY GRANDFATHER’S.
CHAPTER IV. IRISH FIRESIDE STORY AND HISTORY.
CHAPTER V. THE EMIGRANT PARTING.—CARTHY SPAUNIACH.
CHAPTER VI. THE GLADSTONE BLACKBIRD.—MANY FEATURES OF IRISH LIFE.
CHAPTER VII. THE LORDS OF IRELAND.
CHAPTER VIII. A CHAPTER ON GENEALOGY.
CHAPTER IX. “Repeal of the Union.”
CHAPTER X. HOW ENGLAND STARVED IRELAND.
CHAPTER XI. THE BAD TIMES: THE “GOOD PEOPLE.” JILLEN ANDY: HER COFFINLESS GRAVE.
CHAPTER XIII. THE SCATTERING OF MY FAMILY. THE PHŒNIX SOCIETY.
CHAPTER XIV. LOVE AND WAR AND MARRIAGE.
CHAPTER XV. DOCTOR JERRIE CROWLEY, DOCTOR ANTHONY O’RYAN, CHARLES KICKHAM, THE PHŒNIX SOCIETY.
CHAPTER XVI. THE START OF FENIANISM.
CHAPTER XVII. ARREST OF THE PHŒNIX MEN.
CHAPTER XVIII. A STAR-CHAMBER TRIAL.
CHAPTER XX. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE ENEMY.
CHAPTER XXI. JAMES STEPHENS AND JOHN O’MAHONY.
CHAPTER XXII. A LETTER OF MUCH IMPORT, WRITTEN BY JAMES STEPHENS, IN THE YEAR 1861.
CHAPTER XXIV. ADMINISTERING RELIEF TO POOR PEOPLE—A FIGHT WITH THE LANDLORDS.
CHAPTER XXV. JOHN O’DONOVAN, LL. D., EDITOR OF THE ANNALS OF THE FOUR MASTERS.
CHAPTER XXVII. GREAT-GRANDFATHER THOMAS CRIMMINS—HIS RECOLLECTIONS OF THE MEN OF ’98, AND OTHER MEN.
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