The Irish standard., 1897-06-05


49,: ---.----
death Or penal seRvttnde is. no matter
for rulers laughter. What such men
might have been with arms In their
hands and with sti6ening q trained
soldiers in their midst may be Judged
from the heroism Of one al. them,
farmer named Peter 0'Neil Crowley.
who few days afterwards with only
one man at his side, fronted a whole
flying column of troops and gave them
back shot for shot until he fell dead in
front of them. And talk Of .disinterest-
edness!-Mr. J. F. x. O'Brien, the pres
ent member Of parliament for Cork
city, was, at the time Of the rising, at
the head Of one of the principal whole
sale establishments in Cork at salary
Of $500 year, as trustworthy as the
Bank Of England in the eyes OF his en-
ployers, and with a wife and little chit
dren whom he adored. Until he ar
rived at Prayer hill on the fateful night,
he had held no Office in the Fenian body
and had no sort of responsibility for the
breakdown of their arrangements; but
the sight of that mass Of men, deserted,
1eader1ess, weaponless, but still logged
ly set upon hoping on, and fighting on,
was too much, for him. He bade fare
we'll to home, children, and station to
| put himself at the head Of this thou
sandfold for1orn hope; was the next
morning under the bullets of the police
at Ballyknockane, and helping the ser
ladder from the burning barracks;
| was few weeks afterwards sentenced
+: to be hanged, drawn and quartered in
the city for which he is now the men,
Der, passed away TRANQUILITY into years Of
penal servituda, and came back as
cheerfully as ever to the service of Ire
land, with his beard, indeed, whitened,
.. but his spirit neither broken nor even
embittered. And if, like every ccnsid-
cradle man the Fenian movement pro-
duced, he was as devoted a volunteer
in Mr. G1adstone's campaign of concila-
ton as in the old campaign of despera-
ton, there was not and is nct-sho
Parnell commission would be shocked
to hear-the slightest trace of compunc
ton in his heart for the Shrove Tues
day night whe1 he gave up all the
treasures and comforts of happy home
to attest that he thought Irish freedom
worth honest blood.
All these things are invested with &
perhaps unduly romantic glamour il
my memory, for my own eldest brother,
then STRIPPING OF seventeen, was, OF
course, "out" in the. rising" and, for
reasons that may some day be worth
the telling, he was my ideal Of a young
soldier of liberty, with the thews and
sinevs of an athlete, the courage of
D'Artagan, the gallant gaiety dear to
women's hearts, and gift of dashing
off war-scngs which may still be heard,
ringing as rif1e-shots, in the gatherings
of old Munster rebels, I remember-oh!
so vividly-his bright face and CHEEKY
voice-half the zest of school boy mad
for: an adventure, half the pride of a
Ealadin on the night of his veille
darms-as he slowed away his revolver
and cartridges in one pocket, and stuffe.s
the other with the pancakes OF our
Shrove Tuesday festivities surely the
queerest commissariat with which a
campaign against great empire was
ever undertaken! One circumstance
engraved itself with special sharpness
On my memory Upon the morning at
ter the "rising" a regiment of infantry,
troop of horse, and battery of field
guns were concentrated at Mallow under
distinguished English general. A
country gentleman named Purcell had
ridden into town in. panic, shouting
that the Fenians were coming and had
just taken the police barracks at Bally-
knockane. The field guns were unlimber-
ed at the railway station, and I can
feel even still the thrill of indescribaI =
emotion with which / watched the gen
eral surveying through his field glass
the road along which the body Of rebels:
whom I knew my brother had gone to
Join, were every moment expected to
appear, knowing not the instant when
we would hear the first growl Of the
cannon beside us. Many years after
wards the wife of the distinguished
English commander of that day came to
the selfsame town to attend home
rule meeting to protest against my i'm
prisonment under one of the Coercion
acts, and / remember that regretted
1ady-noble by a better title than De-
brett's-telling me that she, too, had
been in Mallow with her husband On
the day when it was not question of
helping Ireland to home rule, but OF
dispatching cannon balls among it's
champions The coincidence has always
seemed to ME the sufficient symbol of a
change that batteries of field-guns could
never have effected between; the two
countries.
There was more quiet heroism, more
Notwithstanding danger about the sys-
tenn of importing arms into Ireland I'M