Читать книгу Rossa's Recollections, 1838 to 1898 - Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa - Страница 13

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When I was a little fellow, I got so much into my head about my family, and about what great big people they were in the world before I came among them, that when I grew up to be a man, I began to trace the genealogy of that family, and I actually did trace it up the generations through Ham, who was saved in Noah’s Ark, to Adam and Eve who lived in the Garden of Paradise one time. While at this work, I was for a few years in communication with John O’Donovan of No. 36 Northumberland Street, Dublin. He was professor of the Irish language in Trinity College. At the college, and at his house I met him whenever business would take me to Dublin. He had then seven children—seven sons, “an effort of nature to preserve the name” as he says in one of his letters to me. I don’t know—sometimes my thoughts are sad, at thinking that perhaps it was my acquaintance with those children when they were young, in the years ’54, ’5, ’6, ’7, ’8 and ’9, that brought them into association with me, and with my crowd of people when I came to live in Dublin entirely in the years 1864 and ’65. John, Edmond, and Willie were the three oldest of the seven sons of John O’Donovan. The three of them were put to jail in Dublin charged with connection with Fenianism. John was drowned in St. Louis, Edmond was killed in Africa, and I was at the funeral of Willie in Calvary cemetery, Brooklyn. I’ll come to them again. Now, I’ll get back to my genealogy.

Some of my friends may say: “To Jericho with your genealogy; what do we care about it! We are here in America, where one man is as good as another.” That’s all right, for any one who wants to have done with Ireland; all right for the man who can say, with him who said to me in New York, one day, twenty-five years ago: “What is Ireland to me now?” “Sure I’m an American citizen!” All right for him who wants to forget all belonging to him in the past, and who wants to be the Adam and Eve of his name and race, but it is otherwise for men who are no way ashamed of those who have gone before them, and who do not want to bury in the grave of American citizenship, all the duties they owe to their motherland, while it remains a land enslaved.

It would be no harm at all, if men of Irish societies in America, in introducing other men into these societies would know who were their Irish fathers and mothers. Any man who is proud of belonging to the old blood of Ireland, will never do anything to bring disgrace upon any one belonging to him. I don’t mind how poor he is; the poorer he is, the nearer he is to God; the nearer he is to sanctification through suffering, and the more marks and signs he has of the hand of the English enemy having been heavily laid upon him.

That hand has been heavily laid upon my race. I, even to-day, feel the weight of it on myself. When the lands of Rossmore were confiscated on my people, they moved to neighboring places, and were hunted from those places, till at last a resting place was found in the town of Ross Carberry. “My great-grandfather came into Ross Carberry with a hat full of gold,” said Peggy Leary to me the other night, “and the family were after being outcanted from seven places, from the time they left Rossmore, till the time they settled in Ross.”

Calling in to Dan O’Geary of Glanworth on my way home from Peggie Leary’s, I got talking to him about old times in Ireland, and I found that Dan had a family story much like my own. “I heard my grandmother, Sarah Blake, say,” said he, “that when my grandfather John Foley came into Glanworth, he had a hat full of gold.”

“A strange measure they had for gold that time, Dan,” said I—“a hat. I heard a cousin of my own make use of the very same words an hour ago.”

“When my great-grandfather came in to Ross,” said she, “he had a hat full of gold.”

“It must mean,” said Dan, “as much gold as would fill a hat.” And so it must. That is the meaning of it in the Irish language—Laan-hata, d’ore—as much gold as would fill a hat. “A hat, full of gold” would be “hata, laan d’ore.” The Irish tongue and the Irish language are not the only things that suffer by the effort to turn everything Irish into English.

That nickname “Rossa” comes to me from Rossmore, not from Rosscarberry. That great grandfather of Peggie Leary’s and mine was called “Donacha mor a Rossa.” The word “outcanted” that his great-granddaughter Peggy Leary used is very likely much the same as the word “evicted” that is in use to-day.

When the Cromwellian plunderers got hold of the lands of our people, they did not like that the plundered people would be settled down anywhere near them. That is how the desire arose of having them sent “to hell or Connacht.” Nor did the plunderers like that the plundered people would hold any remembrance of what belonged to them of old, and that is how it came to my notice that it is only in whispers my people would carry the name “Rossa” with them. The people would call my father “Donacha Russa”—leaving out altogether the name O’Donovan, and in signing papers or writing letters, my father would not add the name Russa, or Rossa.

I vowed to myself one day that if ever I got to be a man, I’d carry the name Rossa with me. And to-day, in the city of New York, in the face of the kind of people that govern that city, I find it as hard to carry that name as ever my fathers found it, in the face of the English governing Ireland.

Indeed it is not much amiss for me to say that it looks to me as if it was the same English Sassenach spirit that was prominent and predominant in the government of this city, and many other cities of America to-day.

My great-grandfather Donacha Rossa was married to Sheela ni Illean:—Julia O’Donovan-Island. They had six sons. Those six sons were married into the following families: Dan’s wife, an O’Mahony Baan of Shounlarach; John’s wife, a Callanan of East Carberry; Den’s wife, a McCarthy-Meening of East Carberry; Conn’s wife, an O’Sullivan Bua’aig; Jer’s wife (my grandmother), an O’Donovan-Baaid, and Flor’s wife, an O’Driscoll—sister to Teige oge O’Driscoll of Derryclathagh.

Those six brothers had three sisters, one of whom married into the Lee family of Clonakilty, one of them into the Barrett family of Caheragh, and the other into the O’Sullivan-Stuocach family of the Common Mountain.

My grandmother Maire-’n-Bhaaid had six sisters. One of them married into the Good family of Macroom; one of them into the Hawkes family of Bandon, one of them into the Hart family of Cahirmore, one of them into the Nagle family of Fearnachountil, and the other two into some other families between Bandon and Cork. It was through this O’Donovan-Baaid connection that my grandfather got the relays of horses between Bandon and Cork the time he had to make the run to the grand jury to save himself from the White-boy indictment.

Then, my grandfather, at the mother’s side was Cornelius O’Driscoll of Renascreena, and my grandmother was Anna ni-Laoghaire. My grandfather had two brothers—Patrick, who was married to the sister of Florry McCarthy of the Mall, and Denis who was married into the O’Donovan-Dheeil family of Mauly-regan. There were some sisters there also—one of them the mother of the O’Callaghans of the Mall, and the other, the mother of the Noonans of Cononagh.

One of my mother’s sisters is Mrs. Bridget Murray, No. 11 Callowhill Street, Philadelphia, and wanting some information for this chapter of my “Recollections,” I wrote lately, asking her to answer some questions that I laid before her. These are the questions and answers:

Q.—What was the maiden name of the mother of my grandfather, Conn O’Driscoll?

A.—Ellen White.

Q.—What was the maiden name of the mother of my grandmother, Annie O’Leary?

A.—Ellen MacKennedy.

Q.—What was the name of my aunt that died young?

A.—Mary.

Q.—What was her husband’s name?

A.—John O’Brien.

Q.—What was the name of the wife of my grand-uncle, Denis O’Driscoll?

A.—Mary O’Donovan-Dheeil.

Q.—Had my grandfather any sister but the one that was Paddy Callaghan’s mother?

A.—Yes; Kate O’Driscoll, married to Denis Noonan.

Father James Noonan, the grandson of that grand-aunt of mine is now in Providence, R. I. I had a strange family reunion with him one time. I went to Washington, D. C., to attend the funeral of Col. Patrick J. Downing. His body was taken to the Cathedral, and after the Requiem Mass, Father Noonan came on the altar to say some kind words as to the worth of the dead soldier. There I sat between the two; the priest was the grandson of my grandfather’s sister, at my mother’s side; the dead man was the grandson of my father’s sister. And that is how we scatter, and how we die, and how we meet in the strange land—not knowing each other.

Another strange meeting at a funeral came to my notice here in New York one time. Dr. Hamilton Williams, of Dungarvan, had me to stand god-father for a child of his. The child died, and I went to the funeral to Calvary cemetery. Dr. Williams was not long in America at the time. It was the first death in his family, and the child was buried in the plot belonging to its mother’s sister. The next plot to the right hand side of it was one on which a tombstone was erected, on which was engraven, “Sacred to the memory of Denis O’Donovan-Rossa, of Ross Carberry, aged ninety years.” There is my godchild, belonging to Waterford, lying side by side with my grand-uncle’s son, belonging to Cork.

I often thought, while reading the tombstones of Flatbush and Calvary, what an interesting book of record and genealogy could be made from them; and from the information that could be derived from the people who own them. I often thought I would like to write such a book. I would like to do it yet, but circumstances are against the possibility of my doing so. How peacefully there, the “Fardown” rests side by side with his up-the-country neighbor, and how quietly the Connaught man slumbers side by side with the Leinster man. Neighborly, as in death, so should we be in life.

I spoke of Father Noonan at Col. Dowling’s funeral; it is no harm to let him be seen in my book, in this letter of his: