Rossa's Recollections, 1838 to 1898. Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa
say there were people present in the congregation whose families gave up all they had in the world rather than give up their faith. My family claimed the honor of that, and prided in it. The priest had no other consolation to give, but the consolation of religion, and, very likely, it was through religion my father and mother learned—and tried—to lighten the load of life, by telling us that the poorer you are the nearer you are to God, and that the more your sufferings are in this world the greater will be your reward in the next.
If that be gospel truth, and I hope it is, there are no people on earth nearer to heaven than the Irish people.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GLADSTONE BLACKBIRD.—MANY FEATURES OF IRISH LIFE.
There were three or four hillocks in the field near the schoolhouse, that grew nothing but bushes and briars, and in these hillocks linnets and goldfinches would build their nests. I never robbed any of these nests, and the birds seemed to understand that I would not hurt or harm them. The mother would sit there hatching, she looking at me and I looking at her, and would not fly away unless I stretched out my hand to catch her. I was great at finding birds’ nests, and occasionally of a Sunday I’d go into the neighboring woods looking for them. One Sunday I went to Starkey’s wood at Cregane, about a mile outside the town. I entered it, there near where the Jackey-boys lived. I went through the line of trees that run into Ownaheencha cross, till I came to another ditch. Then I leaped into a meadow, and as I leaped, a big blackbird began to screech and run fluttering, clattering and crying “chuc-chuc-chuc chuc-chuc.” I must have leaped on the bird’s wing; I must have wounded her some way, when she could not fly; so I thought, and so I ran after her to catch her. But the rogue could fly, though she never went more than a few yards ahead of me. At the end of the field I thought I had her cornered, but she rose up and flew over the ditch into the next field. I retraced my steps to the place where I leaped into the field. I looked to see if I would find any feathers or any sign of my having leaped upon the bird, and on looking I found in the side of the ditch a nest with five young ones in it, with their mouths wide open to receive the food they thought their father or mother was going to give them. I did a very cruel thing that day: I robbed that nest; I took it away with me. On my way home Captain Wat. Starkey met me; Corley Garraviagh was wheeling him in a hand carriage; I had the nest on my head. “Those are my birds you have,” he said. “Where did you get them?” I didn’t mind him, but walked on.
I suppose they were his birds, for those English land-robbers of Ireland claim dominion of “all the birds in the air, and all the fishes in the sea.”
That bird whose nest I robbed has often reminded me of Gladstone, the Prime Minister of England, and the prime hypocrite Governor of Ireland. Or, more correctly speaking, I should say this Gladstone, Prime Minister of England, in his government of Ireland, has often reminded me of that blackbird. The ruse she played to get me away from her nest is the ruse he has played to get Irishmen away from the work that would rob him of Ireland. Irishmen in the hands of English jailers are snatched away from them in the heart of England; English castles are blown down; English governors of Ireland are slain; there is terror in England—terror in the hearts of Englishmen. Gladstone chuckles “chuc-chuc-chuc-chuc, I’ll give you Home Rule for Ireland.” Irishmen listen to him; they follow him; he flies away from them; his eyesight gets bad, and he is blind to all his promises of Home Rule for Ireland. Irishmen are divided; the work that struck terror into the heart of the Englishman is abandoned by them; his eyesight is restored to him, and he is now writing Bible history. His “chuc chuc-chuc” is so much akin to my blackbird’s “chuc-chuc-chuc” that I christen her the “Gladstone blackbird.”
But the resemblance holds good only as regards the use of the cry. The objects and purposes of its use are different. The poor bird cried “chuc, chuc,” to save her children from destruction. Gladstone cried “chuc, chuc,” to keep the children of Ireland in the hands of their destroyer.
And how many are the storied memories that possess me now in connection with that road I traveled the day I robbed the blackbird’s nest! It was on that road I shook hands with Daniel O’Connell; it was on that road Cliona, the fairy queen, used to enlist lovers; that was the road I traveled going to the fair of Newmill, and the road I traveled the day I went to Lord Carberry’s funeral. I have spoken of the Jackey-boys living on that roadside. Who were they? They were boys of the name of O’Mahony, “rough and ready roving boys, like Rory of the Hill.” They had a farm of land; they had a fishing boat, and they had the name of, one way or another, getting the better of any of the English garrison party that would do them a wrong. Two of them were out on the seacliffs one day, robbing an eagle’s nest. A rope was tied to a pannier; one of them went into the pannier; the other let the pannier slide down till it was at the nest. The young ones were put into the pannier, and on the way up the mother eagle attacked the robber. The pannier got some jostling; the rope got jagged against the crags, and one of its strands got broken. The brother in the basket below cried out to the brother on the cliff above, “Dar fia! Shawn, ’ta ceann do na stroundee bristeh” (By this and by that, Jack, one of the strands is broken). “Coimead thu fein go socair,” said the other. “Ni’l aon bao’al ort, chun go brisig an tarna strounda.” (Keep quiet; there is no fear of you till the second strand breaks.)
That Starkey road is the road on which I met Daniel O’Connell. Yes; there were crowds of people on it the day he was coming from the Curragh meeting in Skibbereen, in the year 1843. Through the crowd of people, between the legs of some of them, I made my way to the carriage the liberator was in. I was raised up, and had a hearty shake hands with him.
It was the road Cliona, the fairy queen used to travel. Yes, and her fairy home of Carrig-Cliona is quite convenient to it. But I don’t know whether she is living still. When I was in Ireland a year ago, it looked to me as if the Irish fairies were dead too. In those early days of mine this Cliona used to “show” herself on moonlight nights, robed in sunlight splendor. Every young man she’d meet between the cross of Barnamarrav and the Castle of Rathabharrig would be subjected to examination by her, and if she found him to her liking, he was taken to her cave, or put under an obligation to meet her a certain night in the future. Before that certain night came the young man was dead; and, of course, the pith of this fairy story is, that the fairy queen took him away with her. She hugged to death every one she fell in love with. The Irish poets prayed for deliverance from her fatally bewitching influence. It was of her the poet, in the poem of “O’Donovan’s daughter,” hymned the prayer:
“God grant! ’tis no fay from Cnoc Aoibhin that woos me,
God grant! ’tis not Cleena the queen, that pursues me.”
I said that the road of Cliona’s travels was the road I used to travel going to the fair of Newmill. Is there anything in that recollection that would make any kind of an interesting story? There is, and it is this.
At the fair at Newmill there used to be faction fights, and there used to be companies of policemen under the command of Gore Jones. The policemen would be encamped in a field near by—in the field next to the fair. Their arms would be stacked there. In the evening a fight would commence among the factions. The police would not stir. Gore Jones would not give them any orders to rush in and make peace while the fight was going on. But when the fight was over, he’d rush into the fair field with his men and arrest all who had any signs of blood on them. They were handcuffed and taken to the jail of Ross, and then their families and their friends were kept for days and weeks after, going around to the different landlord magistrates making interest and influence to get them out of jail. That was all a trick of the English government in Ireland, a trick to bring the people whom England had robbed and plundered, more and more under compliment and obligation to those landlord magistrates who were living in possession of the robbery and plunder. They gain their point when they can keep the people always begging and praying to them for some little favor. You now understand why it is that when I am speaking to the Irish people at home and abroad about my recollections, I consider it an interesting thing to them to speak of the fair of Newmill.
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