But the resemblance holds good only as regards the use of the cry. The objects and purposes of its use are different. The poor bird cried “chuc, chuc,” to save her children from destruction. Gladstone cried “chuc, chuc,” to keep the children of Ireland in the hands of their destroyer.
And how many are the storied memories that possess me now in connection with that road I traveled the day I robbed the blackbird’s nest! It was on that road I shook hands with Daniel O’Connell; it was on that road Cliona, the fairy queen, used to enlist lovers; that was the road I traveled going to the fair of Newmill, and the road I traveled the day I went to Lord Carberry’s funeral. I have spoken of the Jackey-boys living on that roadside. Who were they? They were boys of the name of O’Mahony, “rough and ready roving boys, like Rory of the Hill.” They had a farm of land; they had a fishing boat, and they had the name of, one way or another, getting the better of any of the English garrison party that would do them a wrong. Two of them were out on the seacliffs one day, robbing an eagle’s nest. A rope was tied to a pannier; one of them went into the pannier; the other let the pannier slide down till it was at the nest. The young ones were put into the pannier, and on the way up the mother eagle attacked the robber. The pannier got some jostling; the rope got jagged against the crags, and one of its strands got broken. The brother in the basket below cried out to the brother on the cliff above, “Dar fia! Shawn, ’ta ceann do na stroundee bristeh” (By this and by that, Jack, one of the strands is broken). “Coimead thu fein go socair,” said the other. “Ni’l aon bao’al ort, chun go brisig an tarna strounda.” (Keep quiet; there is no fear of you till the second strand breaks.)
That Starkey road is the road on which I met Daniel O’Connell. Yes; there were crowds of people on it the day he was coming from the Curragh meeting in Skibbereen, in the year 1843. Through the crowd of people, between the legs of some of them, I made my way to the carriage the liberator was in. I was raised up, and had a hearty shake hands with him.
It was the road Cliona, the fairy queen used to travel. Yes, and her fairy home of Carrig-Cliona is quite convenient to it. But I don’t know whether she is living still. When I was in Ireland a year ago, it looked to me as if the Irish fairies were dead too. In those early days of mine this Cliona used to “show” herself on moonlight nights, robed in sunlight splendor. Every young man she’d meet between the cross of Barnamarrav and the Castle of Rathabharrig would be subjected to examination by her, and if she found him to her liking, he was taken to her cave, or put under an obligation to meet her a certain night in the future. Before that certain night came the young man was dead; and, of course, the pith of this fairy story is, that the fairy queen took him away with her. She hugged to death every one she fell in love with. The Irish poets prayed for deliverance from her fatally bewitching influence. It was of her the poet, in the poem of “O’Donovan’s daughter,” hymned the prayer:
“God grant! ’tis no fay from Cnoc Aoibhin that woos me,
God grant! ’tis not Cleena the queen, that pursues me.”
I said that the road of Cliona’s travels was the road I used to travel going to the fair of Newmill. Is there anything in that recollection that would make any kind of an interesting story? There is, and it is this.
At the fair at Newmill there used to be faction fights, and there used to be companies of policemen under the command of Gore Jones. The policemen would be encamped in a field near by—in the field next to the fair. Their arms would be stacked there. In the evening a fight would commence among the factions. The police would not stir. Gore Jones would not give them any orders to rush in and make peace while the fight was going on. But when the fight was over, he’d rush into the fair field with his men and arrest all who had any signs of blood on them. They were handcuffed and taken to the jail of Ross, and then their families and their friends were kept for days and weeks after, going around to the different landlord magistrates making interest and influence to get them out of jail. That was all a trick of the English government in Ireland, a trick to bring the people whom England had robbed and plundered, more and more under compliment and obligation to those landlord magistrates who were living in possession of the robbery and plunder. They gain their point when they can keep the people always begging and praying to them for some little favor. You now understand why it is that when I am speaking to the Irish people at home and abroad about my recollections, I consider it an interesting thing to them to speak of the fair of Newmill.
What else is that I brought in? Yes, my Blackbird road was the road we traveled the day I went to Lord Carbery’s funeral. I have a purpose, too, in speaking of that. It must be some time about the year 1844. With four or five other boys, I mootched from school that day and went to Rath-a-Bharrig, or Castlefreke, as it is christened in the language of the plundering Frekes. Before the Cromwellian time, it, and the land around it belonged to the Barrys, of the Norman time.
When we got to the wake-house we did not get in; in fact we kept away from it, because as we ran away from school we did not want to let our fathers see us, so I went over to the lake to look at the swans. I found a swan’s nest with three eggs in it—the largest eggs that ever I saw. I had to put my two hands around one of them, taking it up, showing it to my companions. When the bells rang for the funeral service to move, I took my position behind a big tree in view of the avenue the people would pass through. I watched for my father, and when I saw him, with a piece of white calico around his hat, I got mad, for I knew my father was mad at being subjected to such humiliation, and at being obliged to wear such a menial garb of mourning at such a funeral. The word had been sent around by the gentry that all the tenants on the Carbery estate were to attend the lord’s funeral, and though my father was not paying rent directly to the Carbery lord, still, as his holding was looked upon as the Carbery property, he attended. I will give explanation on this subject by and by.