Rossa's Recollections, 1838 to 1898 by Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa

Author:Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa [Rossa, Jeremiah O'Donovan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Nonfiction
ISBN: 4064066201647
Google: Kx7EDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2019-12-11T05:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XVII.

ARREST OF THE PHŒNIX MEN.

In the Autumn of 1858, Patrick Mansfield Delaney and Martin Hawe were arrested in Kilkenny, and Denis Riordan was arrested in Macroom. While they were in jail, the Kilkenny men came in numbers into the farm of Mr. Delaney, and harvested all the produce of the land for his family. Denis Riordan died in America. Patrick Mansfield Delaney died in America. I met Martin Hawe at his home in Kilkenny in the year 1894. In those early years of my life—embracing the Tenant-Right movement, and the start of the I. R. B. movement, the Parliamentary people were getting up petitions to Parliament every year, everywhere, and the speech-makers were declaiming their opinions on platform meetings.

I was young then—too young to have a voice on the platform—and I’d often say to myself, “If I could speak on that platform, how differently I’d speak of Ireland’s wrongs and rights!”

I am old enough to-day to speak on a platform, but the leaders of the meetings do not want me to speak.

One of those leaders said to me a few days ago:—“Rossa: you should have been on the platform at that meeting the other night, but if you were called upon to speak, we could not depend on you—that you would not say something which would destroy the purpose of the whole meeting.”

Some years ago I got a platform ticket to go to one of those meetings in New York City, and as I was going with others in the ante-room on to the platform, one of the ushers accosted me, and expressed a wish that I would sit in the body of the hall. I made a note of the circumstance in my notebook that day, and I here transcribe it:

“Tuesday, April 10, 1883. I bought a ticket from O’Neill Russell to go to the Gaelic Irish entertainment at Steinway Hall. Then, I was given two platform tickets and two hall tickets by one of the Irish-class men of Clarendon Hall. I gave in one of the platform tickets, and was going up the steps to the platform, when one of the ushers said, ‘I beg your pardon, sir; for various reasons, I wish you would sit in the body of the hall.’

“I make this note—to see if the world will change.”

The world hasn’t changed much during the fourteen years since I made that note. Now I’ll go back to Ireland.

Besides killing the spirit of faction-fighting in Ireland, the Fenian organization did another good thing—it killed the evil spirit that set county against county, and province against province—an evil spirit that worked mischief even in America, up to the advent of Fenianism. But now that is all dead, and we can sing—

Hurrah! for Munster, stout and brave,

For Ulster, sure and steady;

For Connaught rising from the grave,

For Leinster, rough and ready;

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