CONTENTS.

CHAPTERPAGE
I.[The Cradle and the Weaning]5
II.[At my Grandfather’s]10
III.[My Schooldays]22
IV.[Irish Fireside Story and History]35
V.[The Emigrant Parting.—Carthy Spauniach]51
VI.[The Gladstone Blackbird.—Many Features of Irish Life]61
VII.[The Lords of Ireland]71
VIII.[A Chapter on Genealogy]80
IX.[“Repeal of the Union”]101
X.[How England Starved Ireland]108
XI.[The Bad Times: The “Good People.” Jillen Andy: Her Coffinless Grave]119
XII.[1847 and 1848]130
XIII.[The Scattering of My Family.—The Phœnix Society]141
XIV.[Love and War and Marriage]151
XV.[Doctor Jerrie Crowley, Doctor Anthony O’Ryan, Charles Kickham, The Phœnix Society]177
XVI.[The Start of Fenianism]199
XVII.[Arrest of the Phœnix Men]206
XVIII.[A Star-Chamber Trial]216
XIX.[The McManus Funeral—James Stephens and John O’Mahony visit Skibbereen—Fenianism Growing Strong]234
XX.[The Struggle against the Enemy]251
XXI.[James Stephens and John O’Mahony]269
XXII.[A Letter of much Import, Written by James Stephens, in the Year 1861]282
XXIII.[John O’Mahony, Wm. Sullivan, Florry Roger O’Sullivan, Brian Dillon, Jack Dillon, Michael O’Brien, C. U. O’Connell, James Mountaine, and others.]300
XXIV.[Administering Relief to Poor People.—A Fight with the Landlords.]320
XXV.[John O’Donovan, LL. D., Editor of the Annals of the Four Masters.]332
XXVI.[My first Visit to America.—My Mother, John O’Mahony, Thomas Francis Meagher, Robert E. Kelly, and his Son Horace R. Kelly, Michael Corcoran, P. J. Downing, P. J. Condon, William O’Shea, and Michael O’Brien the Manchester Martyr.]378
XXVII.[Great-Grandfather Thomas Crimmins.—His Recollections of the Men of ’98, and other Men.]391

ROSSA’S RECOLLECTIONS.
Sixty Years of an Irishman’s Life.

CHAPTER I.
THE CRADLE AND THE WEANING.

In the Old Abbey field of Ross Carbery, County of Cork, is the old Abbey Church of St. Fachtna. Some twenty yards south of the church is the tomb of Father John Power, around which tomb the people gather on St. John’s eve, “making rounds” and praying for relief from their bodily infirmities.

On the tombstone it is recorded that Father Power died on the 10th of August, 1831. I was at his funeral; I heard my mother say she was “carrying” me that day. It is recorded on the parish registry that I was baptized on the 10th of September, 1831; that my god-father was Jerrie Shanahan, and my god-mother Margaret O’Donovan. When I grew up to boyhood I knew her as “Aunty Peg.” She was the wife of Patrick O’Donovan “Rua,” and was the sister of my mother’s father, Cornelius O’Driscoll. Jerrie Shanahan’s mother was Julia O’Donovan Rossa—my father’s uncle’s daughter. She is buried in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Her granddaughter Shanahan is the mother of nine or ten children of the Cox family, the shoe manufacturers of Rochester, N. Y., who by “clounas” are connected with the family of ex-Congressman John Quinn of New York, as John Quinn’s mother was the daughter of Denis Kane of Ross, whose wife was the sister of John Shanahan. I don’t know if John Quinn knows that the Coxes of Rochester are cousins of his; I don’t know would he care to know that his mother’s first cousin, Jerrie Shanahan is my second cousin, and my god-father. There were forty men of my name and family in my native town when I was a boy; there is not a man or a boy of my name in it now. One woman of the name lives as heritor of the old family tomb in the Old Abbey field.

And that is the story of many another Irishman of the old stock. Families scattered in death as well as in life; a father buried in Ireland, a mother buried in Carolina, America; a brother buried in New York, a brother buried in Pennsylvania, a sister buried in Staten Island. The curse that scattered the Jews is not more destructive than this English curse that scatters the Irish race, living and dead.