Emmet, in his farewell speech, asked that his epitaph should not be
written until Ireland was free, and that undoubtedly suggested the
popular belief that his burial place is known and will be disclosed in
due time.
Sarah Curran died soon after in Sicily of a broken heart, and Tom Moore,
one of Emmet's most beloved friends and also devoted to Miss Curran,
enshrined the pathetic story in a touching ballad:
"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
And lovers are round her sighing;
But coldly she turns from their gaze and weeps,
For her heart on his grave is lying.
"She sings the wild songs of her native plains,
Every note which he loved awaking;
Ah! little they think, who delight in her strains,
How the heart of the minstrel is breaking."
Near by the place where Emmet and his fellow conspirators planned the
revolution of 1803, is No. 151 Thomas Street, the house in which Lord
Edward Fitzgerald, leader of the insurrection of 1798, was captured
after desperate struggle, and it is a curious coincidence that he and
Emmet should both have been arrested by the same man, a certain Major
Sirr, in command of a regiment at the castle. Lord Edward's refuge was
the house of a tailor who sympathized with the insurrection, as almost
every other artisan in Ireland did, and sheltered him for several days
before the arrest. The house is marked with a tablet and an appropriate
inscription. Lord Edward was wounded in the shoulder by Major Sirr and
carried away to prison, where he died before he could be brought into
court.
The Corn Market of Dublin is just beyond the house, and the name of the
thoroughfare is there changed to Thomas Street, which is customary in
Dublin. Sometimes there is a different name for every block, and it is
very puzzling to a stranger. You walk from Clare Street into Merrion
Street and from Merrion Street into some other; from Dame Street into
the Corn Market, and from the Corn Market into Thomas Street, all
unconscious, but the names are plainly posted on the walls of the corner
houses both in English and Gaelic, so that he who runs may read.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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