Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886Various
History
Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886
Various
Periodicals
But these were light trivialities! The grave of Robert Emmet is here.
"Let no man mark my tomb," said he, "until my country takes her place
among the nations of the earth."
Mr. Gladstone stood beside the rough granite, unchiselled, unlettered,
silent slab. No name, no date, no word of sorrow, of hope. The sides are
clipped and hacked, for emigrants have come from afar to take to their
home in the new world bits of the tomb of Robert Emmet. How he comes to
lie here is simply said. When his head was cut off in Thomas Street,
his body was taken to Bully's Acre,--what a name!--and buried.
Rev. Mr. Dobbyn, a sympathizer in the cause, was then Rector of St.
Michael's; he ordered the body to be disinterred that night, and he
placed it secretly in St. Michael's church-yard. A nephew of Robert
Emmet, a New York judge, corroborated this statement some years ago. But
Emmet is not the only rebel that lies here in peace.
Oliver Boyd sleeps here, with God's noblest work, "an honest man,"
written on his tombstone. Here, too, is the grave of the hero, William
Jackson, who was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. While the
judge was still pronouncing the awful doom, the man grew faint and in a
few minutes fell down dead. He had swallowed poison on hearing the
verdict from the jury. In this vault, over which Mr. Gladstone peers
anxiously, you can see a group of heads, all of 1798 men and there on
one of them, is the hangman's crape as it stuck in the wounded neck
since the day on which it and its owner parted company. Mr. Gladstone is
silent as he sees all this and at last mournfully moves away.
Is there ever a tragedy in which clown is wholly absent? As he steps
over the graves, up comes a man as drunk as a goat, and cries out, "Ah!
Mr. Gladstone will you take the duty off the whiskey?" Upon which he of
Hawarden Castle turns him round and says slowly--"My friend, the duty
does not seem to stand much in your way."
JOHN W. MONAHAN.
Gerald Griffin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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