“Every American citizen who subscribes to the proposed preposterous tribute to Queen Victoria should be a marked man. His should be the fate of those Tories of the revolutionary epoch, who, for the betrayal of their country and shameful subservience to George III., were branded, ostracized, and eventually hounded out of their native land.”
CHAPTER XIX.
THE MCMANUS FUNERAL—JAMES STEPHENS AND JOHN O’MAHONY VISIT SKIBBEREEN—FENIANISM GROWING STRONG.
Coming on the year 1860, the men of Skibbereen took up the threads of the organization that were let slip through the arrest of the Phœnix men in ’58. We met James Stephens in Bantry, and Mr. Dan McCartie, Morty Moynahan, and I, with the Bantry men, Denis and William O’Sullivan, Pat, Jerrie and Michael Cullinane, and some others, went in Denis O’Sullivan’s yacht to Glengarriffe, where we had dinner at Eccles’ Hotel. Stephens paid for the dinner. Sailing through Bantry bay, Stephens was smoking a pipe. I remember his taking the pipe in his hand, and saying he would not give the value of that dudeen for the worth of Ireland to England after the death of Queen Victoria; that she, in fact, would be the last English reigning monarch of Ireland.
I don’t know if he is of that opinion to-day. I do not know did he speak that way that day in Bantry bay, from the strong faith he had in the success of his own movement. Anyway, the way he always spoke to his men seemed to give them confidence that he was able to go successfully through the work that was before him, and before them. That was one of his strong points, as an organizer.
About the beginning of the year 1861, a letter from Jas. O’Mahony, of Bandon, announced to us that he and John O’Mahony would be in Rosscarbery on a certain day. Dan McCartie, Morty Moynahan and I went to Ross in Moynahan’s coach. We met them; they had come to town in Banconi’s long car. James O’Mahony returned to Bandon, and John O’Mahony came on to Skibbereen in our coach. He remained in town a few days. We called in from the country some of the most active workers we had in the organization, and introduced them to him. He was very much taken with the McCarthy-Sowney Centre, who told him he would not be satisfied with getting back his lands from the English, without getting back also the back rents that the robber-landlords had been drawing from his people for the past two hundred years.
That was the first time I met John O’Mahony. He made the impression on me that he was a man proud of his name and of his race. And I liked him for that. I like to see an Irishman proud of his people. It is seldom you will find such a man doing anything that would disgrace any one belonging to him. In my work of organizing in Ireland, I felt myself perfectly safe in dealing with men who were proud—no matter how poor they were—of belonging to the “Old Stock.” I trusted them, and would trust them again.
Three years ago, in the summer of 1894, I was traveling with Michael Cusack, John Sarsfield Casey (since dead), and some others, by the Galtee Mountains, from Mitchelstown to Knocklong. We stopped at a village called Kilbehenny. We strolled into the graveyard, and there I saw a large tomb, on the top slab of which were cut the words: