Clonakilty is twenty miles distant from Skibbereen. That visit I made there with Dan McCartie and Morty Moynahan to start the I. R. B. Organization was in 1858. Thirty-six years after, in 1894, I was invited to give a lecture there. Dan O’Leary, one of the new magistrates, presided at the lecture. He, too, died a few weeks ago. After the lecture there was a big supper at the hotel. That cousin of mine whom I initiated into the I. R. B. movement in 1858 sat near me at the supper table. We talked of old times of course, but the old times are changed; one of his family is also one of the new magistrates. In those old times the magistracy was a monopoly in control of the Cromwellian plunderers of the Irish people, such as the Beechers, the Townsends, the Frenches, the Hungerfords, the Somervilles, the lords Bandon, Bantry, and Carbery, with a few of the Irish themselves who became renegades to race and religion, and thus came into sole possession of some of the lands of the clans—such as the O’Donovans, the O’Gradys, the O’Briens and others, who became more English than the English themselves. I remember old Sandy O’Driscoll, of Skibbereen; he was a Catholic, but he had the character and the appearance of being as big a tyrant as any Cromwellian landlord in the barony of Carbery. That much is as much as need be said at present on that subject.
On the subject of Fenianism I have heard many Irishmen in America speak about the large sums of American money that were spent in organizing the movement in Ireland, England and Scotland. I traveled these three countries in connection with the organization of the movement from 1858 to 1865, and I can truthfully say, that in the early years of our endeavor, “the men at home,” spent more of their own money out of their own pockets than was contributed altogether by the whole Fenian organization of America. Hugh Brophy, one of the Dublin “Centres” is in Melbourne; John Kenealy, one of the Cork “Centres,” is in Los Angeles—two extremely distant parts of the world—they will see what I say, and they can bear testimony to the truth of my words.
Now, I’ll get out of this cross bohreen I got into, and get back again to the main road of my story. As a funeral was passing through Skibbereen to the Abbey graveyard one day in ’58, I saw two men whom I thought would be great men in our movement; they were looked upon as the leaders of the clan O’Driscoll and clan McCarthy, of the parishes of Drinagh, Drimoleague and Caheragh. I got into the funeral procession and talked with them the mile of the road out to the Abbey field, and back again. We went into my house and had some dinner. In my bedroom I pledged Corly-Batt, McCarthy-Sowney to work for the cause; somewhere else I gave the pledge to Teige Oge O’Driscoll, of Doire-gclathach. Each of them was about sixty years of age at the time. Teige Oge’s wife was a McCarthy-Sowney, and Teige Oge’s sister was the wife of Finneen a Rossa, the brother of my grandfather, Diarmad a Rossa. Then I met Teige Oge’s eldest son, Conn, and I swore him in. Some dozen years ago I met him in Natick or Holliston, Massachusetts, the father of a large family of hearty sons and daughters.
The McCarthy-Sowney family are a noble Irish family; thoroughly hostile to English rule in Ireland, however they are, or wherever they are.
If you are “on the run” from England in Ireland, no matter what you are hunted for, you have shelter, and protection, and guardianship in the house of a McCarthy-Sowney. Corly-Batt had a grinding mill on the bank of the river, by the main road, between Drimoleague and Bantry; in this mill was Johnnie O’Mahony, a grandson of his, about seventeen years old; he swore in the grandson; and that grandson swore in all the farmers’ sons who came to the mill with wheat and oats and barley. That Johnnie O’Mahony is living somewhere around Boston now.
In the year 1864 I was living in Dublin, I came down to Skibbereen on some business. As I was passing by Drimoleague—it was a fair-day there—I went up to the fair field on the Rock, and as I got within the field, a fight commenced. I knew all the men around, and all the men around knew me. The two leaders of the fight were inside in the middle of the crowd; they had a hold of each other; the sticks were up; I rushed in; I caught hold of the two men—“Here,” said I, “this work must stop; ’tis a shame for the whole of you to be going on this way.” I glanced around as I spoke; the sticks were lowered, and the crowd scattered.
That was one good thing the Fenian organization did in Ireland in its day—it in a great measure broke up the faction-fights and the faction-parties, and got the men of both sides to come together and work in friendly brotherhood for the Irish cause. That, as much as anything else, greatly alarmed the English government and its agents.