After those occurrences in Skibbereen, the Stipendiary Magistrate O’Connell, and Potter, the Police Inspector, came to me, and said they had instructions to give me notice that if I “did not cease from disturbing the community,” I would be called up for sentence, pursuant to the terms of my “plea of guilty.” I told them they should first show that I violated any of those terms; that they should prove me guilty of the practice of drilling, and of the other things sworn against me at the time of my imprisonment; but while to their eyes I was acting within their own law, I did not care about their threats.
CHAPTER XX.
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE ENEMY.
Dan Hallahan, John O’Gorman, Willie O’Gorman, William McCarthy, Jerrie O’Donovan, John Hennigan, Jerrie O’Meara and others who had charge of the flags the night of the Polish demonstration, took them to my house. They went up to the roof and planted them on the chimneys. That was more high-treason. But I let the flags fly, and would not haul them down—much to the alarm of the men of the English garrison who had “charge of the peace” of the community. McCarthy Downing, trying to reason me out of any rebellious propensities those days, told me what a strong ’48 man he was—how affectionately he cherished the possession of a green cap the ’48 men gave him when they were “on the run,” and how he himself would be the first man to handle a pike—if he thought ’twould be of any use. But with England’s strong army and navy, it was nothing but folly for us to think we could do anything against her wonderful power. That is the kind of talk that is of most use to England in Ireland; particularly when it comes from men who have the character of being patriots. And we have many such patriots among us to-day; not alone in Ireland, but in America, and in every other land to which the Irish race is driven—patriots who will do anything to free Ireland but the one thing that MUST be done before she is freed. And to say that she cannot be freed by force is something that no manly Irishman should say—something he should not allow a thought of to enter his mind, while he has it in his power to grasp all these resources of war, or “resources of civilization” that England has at her command for the subjugation of Ireland and other nations. England knows well that Irishmen have it in their power to bring her to her knees, if they fight her with her own weapons, and that is why she labors so insidiously to put the brand of illegality, infamy, and barbarity upon such instruments of war in their hands as in her hands she calls “resources of civilization.” “England,” said Gladstone to Parnell, “has yet in reserve for Ireland the resources of civilization.” Ireland has such “resources” too; and, when it comes to a fight—as come it must—the Parnells must be sure to use them in England as the Gladstones will be sure to use them in Ireland. Then, may there be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and blood for blood—with an opening for Macauley’s New Zealander in London. When I was in Ireland three years ago, I got a letter from Father John O’Brien of Ardfield, Clonakilty, inviting me to spend some time with him in memory of old times in Skibbereen. He was a curate in the town in my time there. The boys in the shop told me one day that Father O’Brien was in looking for me, and left word to have me call up to his house. I called up; in answer to my knock on the rapper, Kittie the housekeeper opened the door. “Kittie,” said I, “is Father O’Brien in?” “Yes,” said he, speaking from the head of the stairs, “Is that Rossa? Come upstairs.” I went upstairs: sat with him for two or three hours; had lunch with him, and lots of talk upon the questions of the day. The question of the day at that time was Fenianism, and we talked it over. “Why is it,” said I, “that I can go to confession and get absolution, and that Dan Hallahan and Simon Donovan and others will be turned away from the confessional unless they give up the Society?” “Oh,” said he, “in that matter the Church has a discretionary power which it uses according to its judgment. The historical experience of the Church regarding political secret societies is, that no matter how good the purpose for which such societies are started, the control of them generally gets into the hands of men who use them against the Church, and not in the interest of any good purpose in the name of which young men are drawn into them. Where we meet a man who, we think, cannot be used against the Church, we use our discretionary power to admit him to the sacraments; when our judgment tells us it may be proper to advise other penitents to have nothing to do with the society, and to discontinue membership in it, we so advise.” Then he quoted some of the Church doctrine in those words of St. Augustine:—“In necessariis, unitas; in non-necessariis, libertas; in omnibus, caritas.—In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
I do not wonder that any Irish priest would turn away from his confessional any Irishman who would kneel at it, confessing to him as one of his sins, that he had taken a pledge or an oath to fight as a soldier for the freedom of his country. If I was a priest myself, I would tell the poor slave to give up sinning. When I came home that day after my visit to Father O’Brien, I found the whole house laughing at me, and calling me “fool, fool.” It was the 1st of April, “Fool’s Day” in Ireland; my people made a “fool” of me in sending me to see Father O’Brien, for he had never been in, asking to see me. But no matter for that; it was a pleasant visit, and the priest laughed heartily afterward when I was telling him how I had been “fooled” into it.
One Sunday afternoon, in this month of April, 1863, I, with some of the boys of the town, made a visit to Union Hall, a seaside village, some four miles to the south of Skibbereen. We remained there till eleven o’clock at night; met many men of the district, and enlivened the place with speech, recitation and song. Next morning Kit-na-Carraiga and a few more of the wives of the Myross fishermen came in to my shop and told me as they were passing through Union Hall they met the magistrate, John Limerick; that he was raging mad, and swearing that if he caught Jerrie-na Phœnix and his crowd in Union Hall again, they would not leave it as they left yesterday. Kit spoke in Irish, and I said to her: “Kit! Innis do a maireach, go riaghmid sios aris de Domhnaig seo chughain.” “Kit! tell him to-morrow that we will go down again next Sunday.”
Next Sunday came, and we were as good as our word.
After mass, some twenty of us left the town, and broke into the fields. We started hares and chased them with our screeching. Many of the farmers’ sons on the way joined us, and, as we were entering Union Hall, we had a pretty big crowd. But there was a far bigger crowd in the village. It was full of people, because all the morning, police had been coming in on every road from the surrounding police stations, and the people followed the police. The threat of John Limerick, the magistrate, had gone out, and the people came in to see what would be the result. Five or six of the magistrates of the district had come in too. Across the little harbor from Glandore we saw a fleet of boats facing for Union Hall. They conveyed men from Ross, some three miles at the other side of Glandore. As the boats approached our quay John Limerick stood on it, and forbade them to land. “Boys,” said I, “never mind what this man says; this is a part of Ireland, your native land, and you have as good right to tread its soil as he has.”
With that, Pat Donovan (now in New York), jumped from his boat into the shallow shoal water; others followed him; Limerick left the quay, and they marched through the village, with their band playing, up to the house of Father Kingston.