Rossa's Recollections, 1838 to 1898. Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa
taken away from them, they would kill every chicken and gosling that was to be found around the farmyard. That is the way my grandfather’s magpies would have their vengeance for having their homes and their families destroyed; and it made every one in my grandfather’s house “keep the peace” toward them. I have often thought of my grandfather’s magpies in connection with the destruction of the houses and families of the Irish people by the English landlords of Ireland. Those magpies seemed to have more manly Irish spirit than the Irish people themselves. But there is no use of talking this way of his childhood’s recollections. I’ll stop. If childhood has pleasure in plenty, I had it in this house of my grandfather, from the age of three to the age of seven.
I am publishing a newspaper called The United Irishman. In it, I printed the two preceding chapters.
Ex-Congressman John Quinn, whom I have spoken of in them, sends me the following letter:
Dear Rossa—I read with delight in the last issue of your truly patriotic journal what to me is the most interesting of all stories; namely, “Rossa’s Recollections.”
The traveling along with you, as it were, carries me back to the early morning of my life in that dear land beyond the sea, and I feel that I hear over again the tales as told by a fond mother to her listening, her wondering children, of saintly Ross Carbery, and the wild, the grand country from there to Bantry Bay.
Yes, I have heard her tell of the miracles which were performed at the tomb of Father John Power, and, I feel that if ever the afflicted were healed of their infirmities on any part of this earth, they were, at the grave of that saintly priest.
I was not born in that county, for “under the blue sky of Tipperary” my eyes first saw the light of day, but, as you say, my mother was born in Ross Carbery; and where is the son who does not love the spot where his mother was born? I do, with a fondness akin to veneration.
Oh, what memories you will call up in those recollections of yours! How the hearts of the sons and daughters of Ireland will throb as they feel themselves carried back in spirit to the abbeys, the raths and, alas! the ruins, around which in infancy their young feet wandered. For to no people on earth are the loved scenes of childhood half so dear as they are to the sons and daughters of our Green Isle.
It is very interesting to me to have brought to my mind once more the dear old names from whence I’ve sprung. And, you ask, “Would John Quinn care to know that the Kanes, the Shanahans, the Coxes, of Rochester; the O’Regans, of South Brooklyn, and the children of the exiles, are cousins of his and mine?” Why, Rossa; I certainly would be more than delighted to know of them, and to meet any of them; the more so, as leaving Ireland with my parents immediately after the “Rebellion” of ’48, I never had much of an opportunity of meeting any of them, or knowing of their whereabouts. No matter where they are, or what their lot might be, they would be to me as dear as kindred could be.
When first I learned that the same blood, through the Shanahan line, flowed through your veins and mine, I seemed to draw you the more closely to me.
I had long admired you for your devotion to motherland. I have in other days wept as I read of your sufferings in British dungeons; when, with hands tied behind your back, you were compelled, for days at a time, to lap up the miserable food given you. I did not know that we were united by ties of kinship then, but I felt bound to you by the strongest ties of country and of home, for I recognized in you a son of the Gael who, no matter what your sufferings might be, had vowed to keep the old flag flying; to keep the torch blazing brightly to the world, proclaiming that all the power of perfidious England could not quench the fires of faith and Fatherland in Ireland.
Yes, you proclaimed, not only from the hilltops and the valleys of our native land, but also from the cells of an English jail, that Ireland was not dead, but would yet live to place her heel on the neck of England.
For this, every Irishman should admire, should honor you. Your paper and your “Recollections” should be in the hands of every true Irishman. The reading of such stories will keep alive the faith of our fathers, faith in the sacred cause; yes, and make hearts feel young again as they read of those grand old hills and valleys of holy Ireland.
And those noble, those prominent figures, the sons and daughters of other days, who played their various parts in the great drama of Irish life and patriotism—we shall read of them, and though of many, very many, we must feel that in this world we shall never meet again, yet we know that in leaving, they have but gone a short time before us to enjoy in heaven that reward, which hearts so good and pure as theirs were, shall surely receive.
Wishing you success in your “Recollections,” your United Irishman, and all your undertakings. I am,
Sincerely yours,
John Quinn.
CHAPTER III.
MY SCHOOLDAYS.
At the age of seven, I was brought home to my father and mother in Ross, to be sent to school, and prepared for Confirmation and Communion. I had received those sacraments of the Church before I was nine years of age. Confirmation day, the boys were lined along the chapel aisle in couples, the boy who was my comrade going up to the altar was Patrick Regan, and it was a singular coincidence that nine years before that, he and I were baptized the same day in the same chapel. And we went through school in the same class.
That time, when I was only a very little boy, I must have been a very big sinner, for I remember the day of my first confession, when I came out the chapel door, relieved of the weight of my sins, and faced the iron gate that stood between me and the main road, I felt as though I could leap over that gate.
If you at any time notice that I occasionally wander away from the main road of my narrative in these “Recollections,” and run into byroads or bohreens, or take a leap of fifty years in advance, from the days of my boyhood to the present days, I have high and holy authority for doing that. Father Brown, of Staten Island reading the Epistle of the day at mass yesterday (Feb. 16, 1896) read these words: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
I am speaking as a child, so far, and very likely my words will give less offense than the words I will have to say, when I grow up, and speak as a man.
In preparing for confirmation, the school broke up about noon on Saturdays, and the boys were led by the master to the chapel, which was near by. There, were Father Jerrie Molony, and his nephews, Michael and Jerrie Molony, who were home from college on vacation, and Tead Red, to help our master in instructing us in our catechism. Tead Red was the instructor in the Irish language. He had a class of his own. I saw Father Molony take hold of a boy in my class one day, and take him over to the class of Tead Red, telling him it was in the Irish language he should learn his catechism. How often here in America have I thought of Father Molony, when I met priests from the most Irish-speaking part of Ireland, who could not speak the Irish language. No wonder that our nationality should become diluted and corrupted, no wonder it should become poisoned with—Trust in the English to free Ireland for us.
But, my schoolmaster! How can I speak of him! He is dead. God be good to him. I often wonder how he got his schooling. I often wonder how the people of Ross of my early days got their schooling, for they spoke the English language more correctly than it is spoken by many of the people of this day who are called educated; and, with that, they naturally spoke the Irish language. The priests used to preach in the Irish language.
I say I wonder how the people of Ross in the generation of my father’s boyhood got their education, for they were born in a time when education was banned in Ireland. The schools that are called National schools were not established till I was born. The hedge-schools and hedge-schoolmasters were around in the generations that preceded my time. In the summer time, the children assembled in the shade of the hedges and trees, and the masters taught them their lessons. In the winter time the hedge-school