That hand has been heavily laid upon my race. I, even to-day, feel the weight of it on myself. When the lands of Rossmore were confiscated on my people, they moved to neighboring places, and were hunted from those places, till at last a resting place was found in the town of Ross Carberry. “My great-grandfather came into Ross Carberry with a hat full of gold,” said Peggy Leary to me the other night, “and the family were after being outcanted from seven places, from the time they left Rossmore, till the time they settled in Ross.”
Calling in to Dan O’Geary of Glanworth on my way home from Peggie Leary’s, I got talking to him about old times in Ireland, and I found that Dan had a family story much like my own. “I heard my grandmother, Sarah Blake, say,” said he, “that when my grandfather John Foley came into Glanworth, he had a hat full of gold.”
“A strange measure they had for gold that time, Dan,” said I—“a hat. I heard a cousin of my own make use of the very same words an hour ago.”
“When my great-grandfather came in to Ross,” said she, “he had a hat full of gold.”
“It must mean,” said Dan, “as much gold as would fill a hat.” And so it must. That is the meaning of it in the Irish language—Laan-hata, d’ore—as much gold as would fill a hat. “A hat, full of gold” would be “hata, laan d’ore.” The Irish tongue and the Irish language are not the only things that suffer by the effort to turn everything Irish into English.
That nickname “Rossa” comes to me from Rossmore, not from Rosscarberry. That great grandfather of Peggie Leary’s and mine was called “Donacha mor a Rossa.” The word “outcanted” that his great-granddaughter Peggy Leary used is very likely much the same as the word “evicted” that is in use to-day.
When the Cromwellian plunderers got hold of the lands of our people, they did not like that the plundered people would be settled down anywhere near them. That is how the desire arose of having them sent “to hell or Connacht.” Nor did the plunderers like that the plundered people would hold any remembrance of what belonged to them of old, and that is how it came to my notice that it is only in whispers my people would carry the name “Rossa” with them. The people would call my father “Donacha Russa”—leaving out altogether the name O’Donovan, and in signing papers or writing letters, my father would not add the name Russa, or Rossa.
I vowed to myself one day that if ever I got to be a man, I’d carry the name Rossa with me. And to-day, in the city of New York, in the face of the kind of people that govern that city, I find it as hard to carry that name as ever my fathers found it, in the face of the English governing Ireland.
Indeed it is not much amiss for me to say that it looks to me as if it was the same English Sassenach spirit that was prominent and predominant in the government of this city, and many other cities of America to-day.
My great-grandfather Donacha Rossa was married to Sheela ni Illean:—Julia O’Donovan-Island. They had six sons. Those six sons were married into the following families: Dan’s wife, an O’Mahony Baan of Shounlarach; John’s wife, a Callanan of East Carberry; Den’s wife, a McCarthy-Meening of East Carberry; Conn’s wife, an O’Sullivan Bua’aig; Jer’s wife (my grandmother), an O’Donovan-Baaid, and Flor’s wife, an O’Driscoll—sister to Teige oge O’Driscoll of Derryclathagh.