100 years ago, on June 29, an Irish hero died who has the unique position in history to be remembered by more people for what was said at his grave than for what he did in life. It should be otherwise for he was a key part of Irish independence. Further, what was said at his grave was inspired by his life and can be considered his final act of rebellion because as a result, enrollment in the Irish Volunteers soared. But, who was this man that he could inspire such action – even from the grave?
His name was Jeremiah O’Donovan and he was born on September 10, 1831 in Co. Cork, to a tenant farmer, Denis O’Donovan and the former Nellie O’Driscoll. Interest in his heritage led him to add Rossa to his name after he learned from a professor of Celtic studies at Queen’s University that his ancestors were of the clan O’Donovan who’d held the townland of Rossa Mor (Rosmore today) in the 17th century and thus, in Celtic tradition, he was entitled to the agnomen “Rossa” which indicated chiefly descent (just as Brian of the tributes had become Brian Boru). He’d been born 30 years after the Act of Union abolished the independent Irish parliament and replaced it with England’s landlord-dominated parliament at Westminster. He learned of that Irish parliament from his elders who lamented the growing demands of Westminster for rent, tithes and taxes; demands that forced the tenant farmers to the lumper – a variety of potato which provided a greater yield per acre than any other crop, but was also more susceptible to blight.
In 1845, his father’s crop failed as Cork was devastated by An Gorta Mor. It failed again in 1846 and 1847, spelling tragedy for those whose survival depended on the lumper. His neighbors, unable to meet the demands, were cast out on the roads. The British parliament did little to help as the evicted, crowded the work-houses and thousands more wandered the roads in search of food. Millions chose emigration, while millions more, unable to flee, remained to die of starvation or hunger-related disease. Young Rossa knew that the Irish parliament had protected farmers during past crop failures by limiting exports and encouraging imports. But now, he watched as landlord’s crops were transported to Cork harbor for export, protected from his starving neighbors by the Queen’s militia. To feed his family, Rossa’s father took a job building roads and in a malnourished state, caught typhus and died in March 1847. To the end of his life Rossa refused to acknowledge that the great hunger was an act of God, considering it blasphemy to blame the almighty for the acts of greedy landlords. His undying hostility to them and their parliament and his uncompromising focus on freedom from their clutches set the course he followed for the rest of his life. An Gorta Mor reduced Ireland’s population by 3 – 5 million to starvation, disease and emigration, but it also created an unforgiving generation that would survive to change Ireland’s future. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa was part of that generation. After his father died, 16-year old Jeremiah went to Skibbereen to work in his cousin’s hardware store. A year later, he lost his family as his mother and siblings emigrated to America with the help of an uncle who had gone out earlier. Young Jeremiah was left behind to care for himself.
In that same year, he was saddened by a failed Young Ireland rising at Ballingarry. He buried himself in nationalist-oriented material in the Nation, a paper published by Thomas Davis and the Irish Confederation and in John Mitchel’s paper, the United Irishman, and endorsed Mitchel’s belief that the hunger was genocide. He further believed that all the problems in the land he loved were due to the control exercised by absentee landlords and he saw a need to educate his people to their rights as Irishmen in their own country. In 1856, he formalized his campaign by creating the Phoenix National and Literary Society to educate his people to their heritage and direct them toward the liberation of Ireland by force of arms. He attracted members of the former Young Ireland movement and Irish Confederation and the Phoenix Society became so popular that it became the forerunner of the Irish Literary Society, the Gaelic League and other educational and nationalist groups that inspired the Gaelic Revival. And it was that Gaelic Revival that awakened the Irish to a new sense of pride through the study of their history that fed the coming War of Independence.
In may 1858, James Stephens, co-founder of the new 2-month old Irish Republican Brotherhood, visited Cork and was so impressed by Rossa’s work that he swore him in as a charter member and the Phoenix Society merged with the IRB and Fenian Brotherhood. In July 1863, he moved to Dublin to manage the newspaper the Irish People and traveled Ireland recruiting for the IRB. In September 1865, the newspaper was suppressed and he was arrested. At his trial he conducted his own defense and he turned the trial into political theater by cross-examining the witnesses, questioning Britain’s right to govern Ireland and reading all the denunciations of the presiding judge that had been previously published in his newspaper – the whole of which took eight hours! He was sentenced to penal servitude for life. In prison he was stubbornly defiant. He was placed in solitary on bread and water so often that he resembled a living skeleton. Once he was manacled with his hands behind his back for 34 straight days – it seems he threw a chamber pot at the prison warden. The mistreatment of Fenian prisoners was denounced by liberal members of parliament and fed a growing amnesty movement. In 1870 he testified before a commission on mistreatment and on January 5, 1871, he and thirty prisoners were released, but exiled for the remainder of their respective sentences. With John Devoy and four others, he sailed for New York where they were greeted as heroes by their Irish brethren as well as local and federal politicians who praised their devotion to Ireland.
Both Rossa and Devoy went on to become the most outstanding members of Clan na Gael – the successor of the Fenian Brotherhood. Rossa’s public speeches and writings as well as his continued support for the physical force tradition of Irish nationalism kept him in the public eye on both sides of the Atlantic until he finally served out his exile in 1891. He visited Ireland in 1894 and was given a patriot’s welcome. On a visit in 1904 received the freedom of the city of Cork and in September 1905, was appointed to the Cork City Council and provided with a cottage in Blackrock. However, after a year owing to his wife’s ill health and wishing to be near his family, he resigned and returned to Staten Island, NY. By 1910 at 79 years of age his health was getting progressively worse. He experienced periods of senility during which he painfully relived the tortures of his prison existence. He spent the last few years of his life in St Vincent’s hospital on Staten Island until the 29th of June just 100 years ago. At the request of his old friend, Tom Clarke, his body was returned to Ireland where the leaders of the Republican movement provided the honorable interment his life of dedication to Irish independence deserved. After lying in state in the Pro-Cathedral and in Dublin City Hall, the funeral procession took place on 1 August 1915. Thousands of volunteers followed the Hibernian Rifles honor guard and hearse to Glasnevin cemetery while hundreds of thousands lined the procession route. Padraic Pearse, in the uniform of an Irish Volunteer officer, stood at the end of the grave and gave what was to become one of the most famous funeral orations in history.
Nine months later as the leader of the 1916 Easter Rising, Pearse and his compatriots would strike the blow that Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa had prepared his followers to strike. And following that, the people he had spent a lifetime educating to their rights would follow suit and bring Ireland through the War of Independence, into the Irish Free State and ultimately to the Republic of Ireland. May we always remember him, not merely as the subject of a grave-side oration, but as one of the key architects of Irish independence!