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
That, no doubt, was to save the plunderer inside from fear from any
missiles being aimed at him by any of the plundered people from the
housetops of the city. Those Butlers--the Ormonds, were often fighting
about boundaries and other matters with the Fitzgeralds, the lords of
Desmond. The two families came in, in the Strongbownian time. It is
said of them that they became more Irish than the Irish themselves.
That transition came on naturally. Ireland became a hunting ground for
marauding Englishmen. The Englishmen of the thirteenth century learned
that the invaders of the twelfth century had got a “soft snap” of it
in Ireland, and they tried their luck there. They trespassed on the
possessions of the Desmonds and the Ormonds; so the Fitzgeralds and
the Butlers planted in Ireland had to fight against the new English
coming in. And thus it came into Irish history that some of these
Butlers and Fitzgeralds have been century after century declared in
rebellion against England.
The old saying has it that a guilty conscience needs no accuser. Those
walls were not built around the castles of Ireland ’til the English
came into Ireland.
Prendergast in his book of the “Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland,” and
Regnault, in his “Criminal History of England,” and other historians
say they were built for the double purpose of securing the claim from
other plunderers who would want to dispute the boundary, and of saving
the plunderer from the chance of getting a bullet or a stone or any
other hostile missile or message from any of the plundered people in
the neighborhood.
Those plunderers know they deserve it, and that is why they try to
shelter themselves against it. That is how it is that England has
passed so many laws to keep arms of all kinds out of the hands of
the Irish people, and how she has passed so many laws to kill the
Irish language out of their tongues. She passed those laws against
the language, because wherever that language is spoken it gives the
name and ownership of the castle to the old Irish owner of it. Lord
Rosse’s castle in Birr is to-day called by the Irish-speaking people
“Caislean ui Carrooil,” the Castle of the O’Carrolls; Castle Bernard,
the residence of the Earl of Bandon, is called Caislean ui Mahoona;
Castle Freke, the residence of the Freke Lord Carbery, is called
“Rath-a-Bharrig,” the Castle of the Barrys, and so on throughout all
Ireland.
The Dublin “Gaelic Journal” for the month of May, 1896, has come
to me as I write this chapter. I look at it and see a few lines
that naturally fit in here. These are they; “Donghall, O’Donngaile,
O’Donnelly, Baile ui-Dhonnghaile, O’Donnelly’s town, now called
Castlecaulfield, County Tyrone.”
The English name or title has not a place in the Irish language, no,
nor has it caught on to the Irish tongue yet. Neither has it a place
in the Irish heart. Notwithstanding all that English laws have done to
blot Irish history, the Irish people, in the Irish language, still hold
their own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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