father, Barry Desmond, might have been applied those touching lines of the poet Campbell:—
“There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin,
The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill;
For his country he sighed, when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill.
But the day-star attracted his eyes’ sad devotion,
For it rose o’er his own native isle of the ocean,
Where once, in the fire of his youthful emotion,
He sang the bold anthem of Erin-go-bragh.”
When a very young man,—scarcely eighteen years of age,—being a friend of Thomas Addis Emmett and Lord Edward Fitzgerald (though his family were firm Protestants), and carried away by mistaken patriotism, he had been induced to take a part in the lamentable Irish rebellion of 1798, which stained their beloved country with blood, and left her in a far more deplorable condition than she had previously been. Young as he was, my father had been actively engaged in the various skirmishes and battles which occurred between the insurgent forces and the royal troops. He was present at Arklow, Ross, and Vinegar-hill, where he was wounded; and had it not been for the resolute courage of a devoted follower, Tim Molloy, he would have fallen into the hands of the victors. Carried off the field of battle, he was concealed for many weeks in a mud hut by the faithful Tim; who, when a price was set on his head, went forth nightly to obtain provisions, and finally assisted him to reach the coast. He there, accompanied by Tim, embarked on board a vessel bound for the West Indies; but unable to remain with safety in any of the English islands, after long wanderings they landed on the shores of Venezuela, then belonging to the Spaniards. Tim, fearing that should his beloved master remain at any of their ports the Spanish authorities might deliver him up to the English Government, urged him to push farther inland. At length they reached the region I have described, where their wanderings were over; for my father here found a fellow-exile, Mr Denis Concannan, who had some years before arrived in the country and married the daughter of a Spanish hidalgo of considerable wealth. He was cordially received by Mr Concannan and his wife, who had several sons and daughters,—one of whom, in the course of time, became my father’s wife and my mother.
His friends at home, to whom he at length divulged the place of his retreat, might probably have obtained a pardon for him on the plea of his youth, but, though still entertaining a warm affection for his native land, he had become much attached to the country of his adoption, which my mother also was unwilling to leave. My uncles, moreover, had been sent to England for their education, where one of them continued to reside; and my family thus kept up communication with the old country.
When I was old enough to go to school, my father determined to send me also to the care of my Uncle Denis. As we had always spoken English in our family, I did not feel myself completely a stranger in a strange land; and brought up among English boys, I imbibed their ideas and assumed their manners, and was, indeed, more of an Englishman than an Irishman, and certainly more of either than of a Spaniard.
I need not mention any of the incidents of my school-life. They were much like those other boys meet with,—nothing extraordinary. I made a good many friends, and fought two or three battles. One was on the occasion of Tom Rudge, a big fellow, calling me an Irish rebel, and saying that my father had been hanged. I gave him the lie direct, and replied that if he had been shot he would have died the death of a gentleman, which was more than Rudge himself was; but that he had neither been shot nor hanged, for he was alive and well, and that I hoped to see him again before many years were over. I thereon planted my fist between Rudge’s eyes, which drew fire from them, and left them both swollen and blackened. We then set to, and I was getting the best of it, driving my antagonist backwards, when one of the ushers appeared, and seizing hold of me carried me up to the doctor. I pleaded that I had been grossly insulted. He replied that it was my duty to forgive insult, and asked what Tom Rudge had said to me. I told him.
“I thought that you were an orphan,” he observed, “the son of Mr Concannan’s sister, and that your father was dead.”
“Mr Concannan is my uncle, sir,” I replied; “but my father is alive and well, I hope, in South America.”
The expression of surprise which passed over the master’s countenance made me fear that I had said something imprudent.