That week, the wife and children of our cousin, Paddy Donovan in New York, were leaving Ross for America. My god-father, Jerrie Shannahan, was the car-man who was taking them to Cork. I went to Cork with them. When they sailed away I came back to Ross with my god-father. We left Cork on Saturday evening, and were in Ross on Sunday morning. Our horse had no load coming back but the two of us.
During the few days I was in Cork, I went around, looking for work. I had with me a good character certificate that I got from my parish priest. These were the words of it—“I know Jeremiah O’Donovan, of this parish, to be a smart, intelligent young lad. His conduct, up to this, has been good and correct. I recommend him as one who will prove honest and trustworthy.—Michael O’Hea, P. P., Ross Carberry.”
With that, I went on board a ship in the river Lee, and offered myself as cabin-boy, or any kind of boy. The mate liked me; but as the captain was not on board he could not, in his absence, take me.
Then, I knew that Andy-Andy lately ’listed, in Ross, and that he and his regiment were in barracks in Cork. I went up to the top of Cork Hill. I inquired at the barrack gate for Andy Hayes of Ross. I was told he was detailed on guard duty at the County Jail. I made my way to the County Jail, and there, inside the gate—in the guard-house, between the inside gate and the outside gate—I met Andy-Andy, in England’s red-coat uniform—as fine a looking man as you’d meet in a day’s walk—six feet two or three in height. Three or four years before that day, I buried his mother, Jillen, without a coffin—
Then Andy died a-soldiering in Bombay,
And Charlie died in Ross the other day;
Now, no one lives to blush, because I say
That Jillen Andy went uncoffined to the clay.
And eight or nine years after the day that I met Andy-Andy in the guard-room of the County Jail of Cork, I thought of him as I stood handcuffed in that same guard-room, going in to that Jail a Phœnix prisoner.
And what strange connections I find myself making in these Recollections of mine! Last week Daniel O’Donovan, the shoe manufacturer of Lynn, made a visit to my office. “Rossa,” said he. “You spoke of an uncle of mine in that book of prison life that you wrote; you remember the man, Jack McCart, that gave you the handkerchief to roll around the stone that pillowed Jillen’s head—that man, John Dempsey-McCart, was the brother of my mother.”