life. The exact human cost of the Famine in Ireland can never be adequately examined, but most estimates suggest that the population went into free fall, with more than one million people choosing to leave Ireland in search of a better life, and some two million people dying. The 1841 census noted there were over eight million people living in Ireland that year. Every census since 1841 has been substantially lower.
The Famine placed an immense strain on the O’Donovans, and all resources were dried up to provide for the family. O’Donovan Rossa recalled that early on in the Famine all their money was lost to pay the rent for their tenant farm. He noted that the wheat from his parents’ farm came to £18.5s, but had been seized by the landlord who, fearing it would be used by the family rather than as a means of generating money for rent, employed men to watch over it so that it was threshed, bagged and taken to the mill by the family rather than be used for any other purpose. The problem for the O’Donovans was that their rent was also £18 and this money was promptly handed over to the landlord’s agent, Garrett Barry. Lamenting the horror of the Famine in his later years, he recalled how, as a boy, he did not know ‘how my father felt. I don’t know how my mother felt. I don’t know how I felt. There were four children of us there. The potato crop was gone; the wheat crop was gone.’10 By 1846, the second year of the Famine, there was further distress throughout the country as the blight struck again, but on this occasion the potato did not grow at all, and as fields became increasingly untended, the rural landscape was dotted with yellow ragwort – a worthless weed. Standing on a hill overlooking Roscarbery, O’Donovan Rossa saw over a mile of land covered in the weed; he recalled that despite the horror unfolding, it was a beautiful sight to see as it glistened in the sun. He realised that the beautiful scene, which he watched from upon high, was the baleful beauty of decay and death.
Financially, the family could no longer survive after their rent had been paid to the landlord, and Denis O’Donovan, increasingly desperate, had plunged the family into debt. Their resources, already stretched, were further exasperated when a family friend, Donal O’Donovan Buidhe, arrived at their home looking for shelter. Unable to pay his rent, he had been evicted and arrived with his family of six children and distressed wife. Unable to turn their friends away, Denis O’Donovan helped to clear an outhouse on his land for them to live in. The O’Donovan Buidhe’s had a donkey, which the young O’Donovan Rossa was taken by, but looking for it one day he could not locate it; the family, in their desperation, had eaten it. Seeking to relieve their distress, Denis and Nellie agreed that they needed to seek assistance. Denis O’Donovan’s sister was quite wealthy and he sent Nellie to her to ask for help. While his sister was favourable to helping her brother, her son-in-law, whom she asked for advice, prevented her from giving them money as the family were so sunk in debt that they would never be able to pay it back and the money would be lost.
Like so many fathers in Famine Ireland, to relieve his family’s distress, Denis O’Donovan turned to the Board of Works for support and was employed as labourer supervisor. He had worked on a road through Rory Glen, West Cork and had employed the young Rossa as one of his workers. Struggling for preservation, the O’Donovans were working extraordinarily hard. While working on the local roads surrounded by farms and fields, O’Donovan Rossa could not help but notice that despite the increasing hunger and deprivation in Ireland, there was still an abundance of food in the country, and recalling his personal experience of the Famine, he explained:
During those three years in Ireland, ’45, ’46, and ’47 the potato crops failed, but the other crops grew well, and as in the case of my people in ’45, the landlords came in on the people everywhere and seized the grain crops for the rent – not caring much what became of those whose labour and sweat produced those crops. The people died of starvation, by the thousands.11
One of those who died was O’Donovan Rossa’s father on 25 March 1847. Denis O’Donovan had contracted fever and O’Donovan Rossa replaced his father as labourer–supervisor at 16–years-of-age. He realised that his father’s death had left a family of five fatherless and effectively penniless. Denis was waked the day after his death and a great crowd descended on the family home to pay their respects to him. The following day he was buried in the family plot at Ross Abbey. This was not the only Famine tragedy to befall the 16–year-old Rossa. The following year, a woman whom he had been friendly with, Jillen Andy, died of Famine fever, leaving four sons orphaned. He had been particularly friendly with Jillen’s fourth son, Tade. O’Donovan Rossa was kind to Tade, who was mentally disabled, and he recollected how he would regularly take Tade on his back to school and tell him stories to make him laugh. One evening in 1848, while playing on the street, Tade came to him with the news that his mother had died, and he asked the young Rossa to help him bury her. With no money for a coffin and no mourners, they buried the woman in a shallow grave and tied a pillow to her head. Laying an apron over her head, so the dirt could not touch her face, Tade and Rossa filled the shallow grave. Within one month his friend was buried with his mother, his life another casualty of the Famine.
Like his father, O’Donovan Rossa, shortly after the burial of Tade, was struck by fever. Lying in bed for a little over a week, his family thought he was dying. While he was in great pain and his life was challenged, he survived the bout of fever but recovering from his illness he complained about his eyes, which became infected. The pain in his eyes was attributed to fairies and his mother wondered what the fairy world had against them and why they were being punished so much. By now the family were heavily in debt and debt collectors increasingly ploughed pressure on Nellie O’Donovan, keenly aware that she was at her lowest ebb. The family had no money and could not oblige the collectors; as a result everything inside the house was seized and sold, much to the family’s indignity. Rossa recalled how the family were left hungry and dependent on relatives and neighbours for assistance. On one particular occasion, he remembered how, coming home from playing with his friends, he found his mother in tears – there was no food in the house and she was unable to provide for her children. Searching through his pockets he found a single penny piece. He was so hungry. Leaving the house the young O’Donovan Rossa made his way to a nearby shop and bought a penny bun, recalling how ‘I stole to the back of the house and thievishly ate that penny bun without sharing it with my mother, my sister and my brothers.’12
Soon after this an eviction notice was given to Nellie O’Donovan. The family moved into a house formally owned by a neighbour Darby Holland, who had died. They secured the house through a family relative who lived there rent free during her life. As part of the agreement Nellie O’Donovan would be paid £12 for a wheat crop growing in Darby Holland’s former hill field. This money was not used to provide for the family; the £12 was needed to pay back debts incurred since Denis O’Donovan died.
The year of 1848 was a tough one for the O’Donovan family, but it was also a year of great social change throughout Europe. In January 1848 there was a rebellion in Sicily; by February the winds of change had reached France where there was a republican revolution and the French monarchy was overthrown.
In March, Germany was the scene of a failed wave of protest seeking German national unity and freedom of assembly, while in nearby Denmark later that month there was popular opposition levelled against a system of monarchical absolutism. The revolutions sweeping throughout Europe certainly influenced nationalist Ireland. While the Repeal movement looked on many within its offshoot, Young Ireland became convinced that the time had come for Ireland to proclaim its right to independence. William Smith O’Brien, perhaps one of the most famous of the Young Irelanders, inspired by the success of the French Revolution, aimed to establish an Irish National Guard and a council of 300 members to function as the embryo of an independent Irish parliament. In deference to the French Republic, Smith O’Brien, with Thomas Francis Meagher travelled to Paris to seek recognition of their aims. The French were, however, unwilling to support the Young Irelanders, as the recognition of their aims would antagonise the British. O’Brien and his followers in the Young Irelanders regarded the republic as a necessary evil, not in the context that they supported its establishment, but as a means to threaten the government to terms. In this regard the Young Irelanders’ strategy had initially held out for an Irish parliament by peace, or a republic
