Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa was born Jeremiah O'Donovan in Reenascreena, County Cork, on 10 September 1831. While he was the son of tenant farmers, the family could trace their ancestry back to nobler days when, before the English confiscation of Irish land, they had held the parish of Kilmeen. (The honorary title "Rossa" came…

While the rest of Europe plunged into darkness with the fall of the Roman Empire, the light of learning and western civilization was kept flickering in Ireland, preserved in the monasteries established by the followers of St.  Patrick.   However, it would only be a matter of time…