Two years after the time I am speaking of, a number of young men in Skibbereen, realizing the sad state of things, came together and started the Phœnix National and Literary Society. I think that Society was started in 1856. I remember the night we met to give it a name. Some proposed that it be called the “Emmet Monument Association.” Others proposed other names. I proposed that it be called the “Phœnix National and Literary Society”—the word “Phœnix” signifying that the Irish cause was again to rise from the ashes of our martyred nationality. My resolution was carried, and that is how the word “Phœnix” comes into Irish national history.
Most of the boys who attended that meeting are dead. I could not now count more than four of them who are living: Daniel McCartie, of Newark, N. J.; Dan O’Crowley, of Springfield, Ill., and Patrick Carey, of Troy, N. Y.
James Stephens came to Skibbereen one day in the summer of 1858. He had a letter of introduction from Jas. O’Mahony, of Bandon, to Donal Oge—one of our members. He initiated Donal Oge (Dan McCartie) into the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. Donal Oge initiated me the next day; I initiated Patrick J. Downing and Morty Moynahan the following day; and so, the good cause spread.
In three or four months, we had three or four baronies of the southwest of Cork County organized; Donal Oge, Morty Moynahan and I became three centres of three circles. We had drillings at night in the woods and on the hillsides; the rumblings, and rumors of war were heard all around; the government were becoming alarmed; they made a raid upon our homes on the night of December 8, and the second day after, some twenty of us were prisoners in the county jail in the city of Cork.
CHAPTER XIV.
LOVE AND WAR AND MARRIAGE.
The last chapter commenced with the arrest of the men of ’48 and ran over the succeeding ten years, up to the arrest of the men of ’58. Those ten years carried me from boyhood into manhood. I could very well skip them by, and say no more about them, but many men and women who are reading these “Recollections” in the United Irishman would not be pleased at my doing that. They have become interested in my stories of Irish life and Irish character, and, as one purpose of my writing is to make a true picture of these, I must, even at the risk of being charged with egotism, face that charge, and tell my own story.
When I came to live in Skibbereen, in 1848, there was a Father Matthew Temperance society in the town. I took the Father Matthew pledge, and I became a member of that society. I kept that pledge till the year 1857. To that circumstance I place a due share of credit for being able to go through the world with a strong and healthy constitution. It is no harm to add that the past seventeen years of my life have been with me years of temperance, as were those nine years from ’48 to ’57.
I had no salary in Skibbereen the first year. I was clothed and fed as one of the family. Then, my aunt’s son-in-law, Morty Downing, changed his residence from one house to another, and enlarged his business by adding general hardware, cutlery and agricultural seeds to his stock of ironmongery and farm implements. I was allowed a salary of two pounds a year, I was offered an indentureship of clerkship for five years, but I would not sign the indentures. I did not want to bind myself. My aunt wanted me to do it, but I would not. My employer represented to her that I was becoming too much my own master, and that for my own good, he wanted to have a stronger hand over me. Possibly he was right, but all to no use, I remained wrong, and kept my freedom. He would go to my aunt’s place at Smorane—a mile outside the town—every Sunday evening; and, riding his horse “Mouse” into town one evening, he saw me riding through the street on an empty tar barrel. Next morning he was out of bed before I was up, and as I came downstairs he met me with a whip in his hand. He gave me a good thrashing. I didn’t cry, I only sulked. That evening I took my supper in the kitchen. While taking supper, Kittie, the boss servant, told me that the master said I was to do her work of cleaning all the shoes next morning, and that as she would be out milking the cows I would find the shoes in the usual place. When I came downstairs next morning, Kittie was out milking the cows; there was a nice blazing fire in the grate; I got a stool and I put it opposite the grate; I got the shoes and boots and put them on the stool; I got the water can, and I filled the boots and shoes with water. There I left them, and left the house and went home to my mother in Ross. She had not then gone to America; she was living in the house that was left to her rent-free during her life for giving up peaceable possessions of the farm.