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 — John Shaqi
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 AmericaO'Donovan Rossa, Jeremiah
History
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
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.
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