Cuimhní cinn a breacadh 1918-19 : an cheathrú cuid

Scríofa ague mé i mo leaba, Samhain 1919. Baile Átha Cliath

For a long time while the Gaelic League was still young I used to look upon O’Neill Russell as its enfant terrible. He was liable to fly off at some extraordinary tangent or to find a stumbling block of offense in something apparently perfectly innocent. His was one of those natures before whose mental vision nearly all things bulk equally big. He saw everything in [strong] livid colours. His mental vision knew no neutral tints. What he liked was white as the driven snow, what he disliked was black as Erebus. He knew no between. Withal he was as honest single-hearted and devoted a man as I ever met with. His passion for the Irish language which began

as a boy in his fathers house in West Meath con-tinued unabated until the last day of his life. When he was young there was still some Irish spoken in W Meath. He used to bribe an old workman with apples to tell him the Irish for various things. He was I think a Protestant, a descendant of planters. He used to say “look at me who have not even a Milesian[?] name and all I have done for Ireland and her language, but if I was one of ye boys with ye’re blood and traditions behind me, would anyone be able to hold me”! He also told me that when the tenantry and big farmers gave a dinner to some peer, had G. [?] I think whose name I forget, they wanted his

grand uncle to make a speech in proposing his health but he excused himself by saying that he could not make a speech except in Irish, for he could not make one in English. He well remembered the Night of the big wind and wrote an article on it in later times which was copied and recopied by newspapers all over the states. I remember two things he told me about it, that [f] not a crow (rook) was left alive in the Midlands[?], and that it was years before they began to grow plenty again, and secondly that one of Mother Careys chickens was found in front of his house in W Meath the morning after the storm, having been blown thither off the sea [from] a couple of hundred miles.

When I came to Dublin to go to College I knew nobody in the city. I went however to a meeting of the society of the propagation (preservation) of the Irish language, and there met O’ Neill Russell, the first stranger whose acquaintance I made in Dublin. He was very tall muscular and well-built and was delighted to hear me speaking Irish. He invited me to his lodgings in Kingstown Dun Laoghaire where he introduced me to his wife who was I think either a Swede or a Dane. He used to speak French with her. The other people who seemed to attend the Societys meetings were Rev Maxwell Close, Father Nolan, David Comyn, a Mr Morrin[?], Mr O Mulrenan and possibly two or three others whom I have for-gotten. Sometimes only three of four turned up

I gradually made their acquaintance and the acquaintance of Mac Sweeney the secretary, also secret-ary to the Royal Irish Academy who was paid [botún] 40 a year for his services. After I had returned home I had a letter in Irish from O Neill Russell, the first of many thousand Irish letters which I was destined to receive, in which he said ar doigh go léigheán tú Ruskin, is mór an truagh[?] nár b’eireannach é.! So important of things was I at this time that I had to inquire as to who Ruskin was!

I did not [meet] see him after this until I met him in America, when I left Canada and came to New York in 1890? where he got up a couple of meetings and a supper for me. He was as