Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. Shane Kenna

His job was secured on the understanding that the Dowlings would feed, shelter and clothe him in return for his labour. In 1849, however, business began to improve for Mortimer Dowling, and he changed premises, enlarging his business from general hardware and including cutlery, agricultural seeds and farm and ironmongery tools. Later on, Dowling expanded into the wool, cotton and flax industry, and as a Poor Law Guardian, won contracts to supply them to the Poor Law Unions in Skibbereen, Bantry and Kenmare. With the expansion of his business, O’Donovan Rossa now could draw a salary and earned the tidy sum of £2 per year. He was also offered to work for Dowling for five years, but he was reluctant to sign such a long and binding contract. Mortimer Dowling had been a Young Irelander and had volumes of The Nation and Repeal pamphlets stored in his home, which the young Rossa eagerly read. Of particular interest to O’Donovan Rossa was the Young Irelander John Mitchel. Mitchel had been the most vocal advocate of violent revolution amongst the ranks of the Young Irelanders and had broken from the organisation in his desire to see a violent uprising. Explaining the Famine of 1852, Mitchel, who would eventually be deported to Van Diemen’s Land, found that the disaster was not manmade but was the result of a British policy to starve Ireland into submission. O’Donovan Rossa agreed with this analysis of the Famine as a man-made catastrophe, stating in retrospect:

      Coroners’ Juries would hold inquests on Irish people who were found dead in the ditches, and would return verdicts of ‘murder’ against the English government, but England cared nothing for that; her work was going on splendidly; she wanted the Irish race cleared out of Ireland – cleared out entirely, and now something was doing for her what her guns and bayonets had failed to do. She gave thanks to God that it was so; that the Irish were gone – ‘gone with a vengeance.’15

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      THE RISE OF THE PHOENIX

      In 1853 O’Donovan Rossa married Nora Eager, from Milltown, County Kerry, and coming into some money, he rented a shop and house from Mortimer Dowling in Skibbereen.1 Continuing Dowling’s trade of agricultural seeds and hardware, his new business was a commercial success and was supported by local farmers. Settling into married life, Jeremiah and Nora had four children: Denis, John, Cornelius and Jeremiah. For all means and purposes, O’Donovan Rossa was by now following the path of a well-to-do businessman who was providing for his family. He had also established a good reputation in Skibbereen as a local bard, writing what was termed skellig lists, a popular tradition of writing scurrilous and satirical verses. Within three years of opening his shop and getting married, O’Donovan Rossa began correspondence with John O’Donovan, a professor of the Irish language, editor of the famed Annals of the Four Masters, and a noted antiquarian living at No. 36 Northumberland Street, Dublin. O’Donovan Rossa was familiar with the stories of his family’s Celtic roots, with his father often using the nickname ‘Rossa’ in reference to the family’s perceived Celtic roots in the Rossmore area of Cork. O’Donovan had suggested that Jeremiah O’Donovan’s family were direct descendants of the MacAinee branch of the O’Donovan dynasty, and from this he adopted the name ‘Rossa’ to signify his family’s Celtic lineage.2

      In 1856, O’Donovan Rossa became a founding member of the Phoenix National and Literary Society. This would chart the beginning of a revolutionary career that would span over fifty years. The society represented the culmination of several individuals with the common aim of the liberation of Ireland by force of arms. It had been founded in the home of Jeremiah Crowley, a chemist, at North Street, Skibbereen. Initially, it closely resembled a debating society and social outlet for Irish nationalists to discuss revolutionary ideas and Irish history and culture. It was not originally a revolutionary body. The preamble of the Phoenix Society read:

      For years past, since 1848 particularly, the people of Ireland have been looked upon as having silently acquiesced in their position as a conquered province, and having given up all idea of a national existence, apart from that of England, the desire for independence and self-government is thought to have been completely trodden out, or to be restricted to a few ‘mere enthusiasts’.

      To show, as far as in us lies, the fallacy of this opinion; to advocate and assert our right to a distinct national existence; to make the peasantry in our own locality, at least, understand that for them exists but one country which they are bound to love, and cherish, and defend; to make them understand their rights as men; to combat against the widely spread and corrupt leprosy of Imperialism; and to foster and rouse into action the latent spirit of nationality, are the first and most immediate objects of this society.

      Impressed with the conviction that, to be free, a nation must be enlightened, it shall be with us an object to which every energy will be devoted; to place within the reach of the members of this Society a national literature of the purest and best description; to afford them every useful information connected with the past, and a knowledge of what they are justly entitled to for the future – so that they may ponder on their present degraded position, contrast it with that of various other nations inferior to Ireland in extent, population, and resources; and make it their constant aim and labour to regain those rights which have been, and are, forcibly and unjustly withheld. By this Society an effort will be made for the establishment of the same or similar Societies throughout the country; and, as far as its own immediate influence extends, to found branch Societies, which, if not taking the same name and title, shall, at least, keep in view objects similar to those here stated.3

      Those who had joined the Phoenix Society were frightened by the state of Ireland in the aftermath of the Famine and the disastrous failure of the 1848 Rebellion. According to O’Donovan Rossa, representative of this feeling of malaise, he had suggested the name of the society so as to represent a mythical bird, the Phoenix, famed for its ability to rise from the ashes. In proposing the name for the society he recalled how ‘Ireland was dead, but from the ashes of her martyred nationality she should phoenix-like, arise again.’4 It was evident that within his political thinking the name was chosen as a metaphorical symbol for Ireland and the potential for rebellion in the aftermath of famine. The society grew throughout West Cork and into Kerry, its members consisting of those who were nationally minded and disaffected with the nature of British rule in Ireland. The organisation was not secretive and regular meetings were held in Morty Dowling’s pub. Dowling was a prominent member of the society, and the pub was only three doors down from the Constabulary barracks. Dowling had even written to the local Constabulary asking them whether he was ‘acting illegally in renting a room to the literary society who sit after hours’.5 Marking the anniversary of the foundation of the Phoenix Society in 1858 O’Donovan Rossa even made a public speech, which was printed by the Dundalk Democrat newspaper. In it he commended the concept of Irish independence and the threat of force, and announced in a provocative manner that:

      We Irishmen are slaves and outcasts in the land of our birth. What a shame! What a disgrace! Yes; disgraceful alike to peer and peasant – Protestant, Catholic and Presbyterian. Thus may foreign nations believe this country is not ours, and I am sure you will not be surprised that England is particularly positive on this point. She has made all possible efforts to convince us of it. She has broken the heads of many Irishmen trying to hammer this opinion into them. For seven long and dreary centuries has she been trying to force it on us; and against her during all this time the majority of Irishmen protested. Yet has she disregarded every protestation, every claim, and every petition, and instead of treating us as human beings or subjects, she has made every effort that pen, fire and sword could make to extirpate our race.6

      At the same time that the Phoenix Society was developing in the south, a new constitutional initiative was beginning to emerge in London. This new initiative sought to address the Irish Question within Parliament and seize the potential of establishing an independent Irish party at Westminster to use the power of moral persuasion to force British politicians to consider Irish political issues. Known as the Tenants’ Rights League, and founded by Charles Gavin Duffy, this organisation had actively fought a campaign both within and outside the British Parliament to achieve better rights on the land for tenant farmers and oppose the introduction of an Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, making it a criminal offence for Roman Catholics to use episcopal titles within the United Kingdom outside of the Anglican Church. Two of the strongest opponents of this bill were William Keogh and John Sadlier, who had pledged never to take any office