A History of Ireland in Song

O'Donovan Rossa

Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa (1831-1915), Irish patriot.

Born in the county Cork, as a young man he joined the Fenians and dedicated his life to the cause of Irish freedom. For this, he was arrested in 1867 and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1869, while in prison, he contested and won the Tipperary by-election in absentia — unhindered by such outdated notions as respect for the franchise, the British promptly passed a law depriving "convicted felons" of the right to a seat in the House. He served six year's penal servitude, and, after commution of sentence, lived out the rest of his life, like many of us before and since, in exile in America. For the rest, let two documents speak in his memory: a letter he wrote from prison, and Pádraig Pearse's "character study".

Letter from the Member for Tipperary, O'Donovan Rossa, The Irishman, No. 32, February 5, 1870.

I have already told you about the hypocrisy of these English masters who, after placing me in a position which forced me to get down on my knees and elbows to eat, are now depriving me of food and light and giving me chains and a Bible. I am not complaining of the penalties which my masters inflict on me — it is my job to suffer — but I insist that I have the right to inform the world of the treatment to which I am subjected, and that it is illegal to hold back my letters describing this treatment. The minute precautions taken by the prison authorities to prevent me writing letters are as disgusting as they are absurd. The most insulting method was to strip me once a day for several months and then examine my arms, legs and all other parts of my body. This took place at Millbank daily from February to May 1867. One day I refused, whereupon five prison officers arrived, beat me mercilessly and tore off my clothes. Once I succeeded in getting a letter to the outside, for which I was rewarded by a visit from Messrs. Knox and Pollock, two police magistrates. How ironical to send two government employees to find out the truth about the English prisons. These gentlemen refused to take note of anything important which I had to tell them. When I touched upon a subject which was not to their liking, they stopped me by saying that prison discipline was not their concern. Isn't that so, Messrs. Pollock and Knox? When I told you that I had been forced to wash in water which had already been used by half a dozen English prisoners, did you not refuse to note my complaint? At Chatham I was given a certain amount of tow to pull out and told that I would go without food if I did not finish the work by a certain time. "Perhaps you'll still punish me even if I do the job in time," I shouted. "That's what happened to me at Millbank." "How could it?" asked the jailer. Then I told him that on July 4 I had finished my work ten minutes before the appointed time and picked up a book. The officer saw me do this, accused me of being lazy and I was put on bread and water and locked in a dark cell for forty-eight hours. One day I caught sight of my friend Edward Duffy. He was extremely pale. A little later I heard that Duffy was seriously ill and that he had expressed the wish to see me (we had been very close in Ireland). I begged the governor to give me permission to visit him. He refused point-blank. This was round about Christmas '67 — and a few weeks later a prisoner whispered to me through the bars of my cell: "Duffy is dead." How movingly this would have been described by the English if it had happened in Russia! If Mr. Gladstone had been present on such a sad occasion in Naples, what a touching picture he would have painted! Ah! Sweet Pharisees, trading in hypocrisy, with the Bible on their lips and the devil in their bellies. I must say a word in memory of John Lynch. In March 1866 I found myself together with him in the exercise yard. We were being watched so closely that he only managed to say to me, "The cold is killing me." But then what did the English do to us? They took us to London on Christmas Eve. When we arrived at the prison they took away our flannels and left us shivering in our cells for several months. Yes, they cannot deny that it was they who killed John Lynch. But nevertheless they managed to produce officials at the enquiry who were ready to prove that Lynch and Duffy had been given very gentle treatment. The lies of our English oppressors exceed one's wildest imagination. If I am to die in prison I entreat my family and my friends not to believe a word of what these people say. Let me not be suspected of personal rancour against those who persecuted me with their lies. I accuse only tyranny which makes the use of such methods necessary. Many a time the circumstances have reminded me of Machiavelli's words: "that tyrants have a special interest in circulating the Bible so that the people understand its precepts and offer no resistance to being robbed by brigands". So long as an enslaved people follows the sermons on morality and obedience preached to them by the priests, the tyrants have nothing to fear. If this letter reaches my fellow countrymen I have the right to demand that they raise their voices to insist that justice be done for their suffering brothers. Let these words whip up the blood that is moving sluggishly in their veins! I was harnessed to a cart with a rope tied round my neck. This knot was fastened to a long shaft and two English prisoners received orders to prevent the cart from bouncing. But they refrained from doing this, the shaft rose up into the air and the knot came undone. If it had tightened I would be dead. I insist that they do not possess the right to put me in a situation where my life depends on the acts of other people. A ray of light is penetrating through the bolts and bars of my prison. This is reminder of the day in Newtownwards where I met Orangemen and Ribbonmen who had forgotten their bigotry!

O'Donovan Rossa
Political prisoner sentenced to hard labour

O'Donovan Rossa: A Character Study, Pádraig Pearse , 1915.

O'Donovan Rossa was not the greatest man of the Fenian generation, but he was its most typical man. He was the man that to the masses of his countrymen then and since stood most starkly and plainly for the Fenian idea. More lovable and understandable than the cold and enigmatic Stephens, better known than the shy and sensitive Kickham, more human than the scholarly and chivalrous O'Leary, more picturesque than the able and urbane Luby, older and more prominent than the man who, when the time comes to write his biography, will be recognised as the greatest of the Fenians — John Devoy — Rossa held a unique place in the hearts of Irish men and Irish women. They made songs about him, his very name passed into a proverb. To avow oneself a friend of O'Donovan Rossa meant in the days of our fathers to avow oneself a friend of Ireland; it meant more: it meant to avow oneself a mere Irishman, an Irish enemy, an Irish savage, if you will, naked and unashamed. Rossa was not only extreme, but he represented the left wing of the extremists. Not only would he have Ireland free, but he would have Ireland Gaelic.

And here we have the secret of Rossa's magic, of Rossa's power: he came out of the Gaelic tradition. He was of the Gael; he thought in a Gaelic way; he spoke in Gaelic accents. He was the spiritual and intellectual descendant of Colm Cille and of Seán an Díomais. With Colm Cille he might have said, If I die it shall be from the love I bear the Gael; with Shane O'Neill he held it debasing to twist his mouth with English. To him the Gael and the Gaelic ways were splendid and holy, worthy of all homage and all service; for the English he had a hatred that was tinctured with contempt. He looked upon them as an inferior race, morally and intellectually; he despised their civilisation; he mocked at their institutions and made them look ridiculous.

And this again explains why the English hated him above all the Fenians. They hated him as they hated Shane O'Neill, and as they hated Parnell; but more. For the same crime against English law as his associates he was sentenced to a more terrible penalty; and they pursued him into his prison and tried to break his spirit by mean and petty cruelty. He stood up to them and fought them: he made their whole penal system odious and despicable in the eyes of Europe and America. So the English found Rossa in prison a more terrible foe than Rossa at large; and they were glad at last when they had to let him go. Without any literary pretensions, his story of his prison life remains one of the sombre epics of the earthly inferno.

O'Donovan Rossa was not intellectually broad, but he had great intellectual intensity. His mind was like a hot flame. It seared and burned what was base and mean; it bored its way through falsehoods and conventions; it shot upwards, unerringly, to truth and principle. And this man had one of the toughest and most stubborn souls that have ever been. No man, no government, could either break or bend him. Literally he was incapable of compromise. He could not even parley with compromisers. Nay, he could not act, even for the furtherance of objects held in common, with those who did not hold and avow all his objects. It was characteristic of him that he refused to associate himself with the new departure by which John Devoy threw the support of the Fenians into the land struggle behind Parnell and Davitt; even though the Fenians compromised nothing and even though their support were to mean (and did mean) the winning of the land war. Parnell and Davitt he distrusted; Home Rulers he always regarded as either foolish or dishonest. He knew only one way; and suspected all those who thought there might be two.

And while Rossa was thus unbending, unbending to the point of impracticability, there was no acerbity in his nature. He was full of a kindly Gaelic glee. The olden life of Munster, in which the seanchaidhe told tales in the firelight and songs were made at the autumn harvesting and at the winter spinning, was very dear to him. He saw that life crushed out, or nearly crushed out, in squalor and famine during '47 and '48; but it always lived in his heart. In English prisons and in American cities he remembered the humour and the lore of Carbery. He jested when he was before his judges; he jested when he was tortured by his jailors; sometimes he startled the silence of the prison corridors by laughing aloud and by singing Irish songs in his cell: they thought he was going mad, but he was only trying to keep himself sane.

I have heard from John Devoy the story of his first meeting with Rossa in prison. Rossa was being marched into the governor's office as Devoy was being marched out. In the gaunt man that passed him Devoy did not recognise at first the splendid Rossa he had known. Rossa stopped and said, John. Who are you? said Devoy: I dont know you'. Im Rossa'. Then the warders came between them. Devoy has described another meeting with Rossa, and this time it was Rossa who did not know Devoy. One of the last issues of The Gaelic American that the British Government allowed to enter Ireland contained Devoy's account of a recent visit to Rossa in a hospital in Staten Island. It took a little time to make him realise who it was that stood beside his bed. And are you John Devoy? he said at last. During his long illness he constantly imagined that he was still in an English prison; and there was difficulty in preventing him from trying to make his escape through the window. I have not yet seen any account of his last hours; cabling of such things would imperil the Defence of the Realm.

Enough to know that the valiant soldier of Ireland is dead; that the unconquered spirit is free.

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