‘“Elsewhere in the city groups of mourners began forming up for the final procession. Societies and clubs assembled on St Stephen’s Green at twelve, members of Dublin and provincial Corporations gathered in Grafton Street. The Parnell Leadership Committee, the small remnant of his Parliamentary supporters, met in the National Club. Fresh mourners were still pouring into the city on special trains from all over Ireland, the carriages filled with people wearing the black armband with a ribbon of green.”’
‘Still here, are ye?’ Uncle Peter asked, pausing to pour another glass. ‘Not dropping off yet?’
No, no, his little audience assured him, they were all fine.
‘“The most dramatic farewell of all the farewells that day came in the City Hall, the municipal headquarters of Dublin Catholicism where Daniel O’Connell himself had been Mayor back in the 1840s. Parnell’s coffin was placed on a catafalque on the marble floor of the great circular chamber, ringed with statues of dead heroes from Ireland’s past. He lay in front of a statue of O’Connell himself. There were railings round the body, guarded by members of the Dublin Fire Brigade with their polished helmets to allow the mourners to pass round it to pay their last respects. Some thirty thousand were believed to have done so. All around were flags from that earlier Protestant Parliament which had been brought up from Parnell’s family estate at Avondale in County Wicklow. Behind O’Connell’s statue was a huge Celtic cross of flowers, six feet high, of arum and eucharis lilies, white chrysanthemums and ferns. It came from Parnell’s Parliamentary colleagues. The building was draped with black all the way up to the dome and a great white banner ran across the room bearing what was meant to be Parnell’s last message to his country, ‘Give my love to my colleagues and the Irish people.’ There were other wreaths, of course, from Limerick, from Navan, from Waterford, from Arklow, from Tralee, from Kilkenny, from Donegal, but none more poignant than the simple three of lilies and roses, from the children of Mrs O’Shea, now Mrs Parnell, which said, ‘To my dear mother’s husband, from Nora,’ ‘From little Clare,’ and ‘From little Katie.’ Few in the City Hall that sad Sunday would have known it, little Clare and little Katie themselves did not know it at the time, but it was Parnell who was their father. Other inscriptions spoke of murder and martyrdom in Erin’s cause. Parnell, a man who spent more time in his lifetime cultivating the Roman Catholic hierarchy than he had his own Protestant bishops, was being turned into a human sacrifice in the sacred cause of Irish freedom. The torch of heroic martyrdom had passed in apostolic succession from Wolfe Tone to Daniel O’Connell and from O’Connell to Charles Stewart Parnell. Who would be next?”’
‘That’s good,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘that’s very good, Uncle Peter.’
‘Do you like it now?’ Uncle Peter replied, gazing at them like a very old owl over the tops of his battered spectacles, as eager and hungry for praise as authors usually are.
‘Oh yes,’ Powerscourt said, ‘it’s very good indeed.’
‘“Now came the last journey,”’ Uncle Peter went on, ‘“the last apocalyptic journey to the graveside. As the procession moved out from the sombre gloom of the City Hall the weather changed and sunshine arrived to bless Parnell’s last moments on the streets of Dublin. The young men of the Gaelic Athletic Association formed up in their honour guard around the hearse once more, many of them now holding their hurling sticks like rifles on a drill parade. Behind them came the City Marshal on horseback and in full uniform. Behind the Marshal, Parnell’s horse, riderless, saddled, with the boots in place in reverse position, tribute and symbol to the dead leader since the days of Genghis Khan. Then the carriages, over a hundred of them, with the Mayor and the members of the Corporation and Parnell’s family. There was one carriage, observed but not apprehended by the plain clothes men from Dublin Castle who mingled with the crowds that day, believed to be carrying three veteran Fenians, with whom Parnell had enjoyed ambiguous relationships throughout his life. They, along with the members of the Corporation, had organized the funeral. Behind them a vast procession, most of them wearing black armbands with a green ribbon, said to be two hundred thousand strong.
‘“The great cortege left the City Hall and moved slowly through Christ Church Place into Thomas Street. Here were two more symbolic stops, the first at the house of Robert Emmett, another martyred Protestant rebel who had launched a pathetic postscript to the ’98 Rising in 1803 and been executed for his pains. Emmett’s true claim for inclusion in the pantheon of Irish saints and heroes was his speech from the dock at the close of his trial where he declared that no man should write his epitaph until Ireland was free. Emmett’s epitaph,”’ Uncle Peter looked up at them sternly at this point, ‘“remains unwritten to this day. A little further up the same street came the last stop, the last of Parnell’s Stations of the Cross, at the house where another Protestant rebel, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, was betrayed and fatally wounded at the end of the 1798 rising. Lord Edward had been born into the bluest of blue-blooded Irish families. His father was the Duke of Leinster and he was a child of the vast wealth and splendour of Carton House in County Kildare. Even after he was betrayed for his role with the United Irishmen, his relatives were arranging with the authorities for blind eyes to be turned at selected ports while Lord Edward fled the country. He died in prison several days after the shooting.
‘“It was now taking an hour and three-quarters for the procession to pass a given point. The bands were playing with muffled drums, many of them now working their way through Chopin’s Funeral March. From Thomas Street they took the body of the man they had called The Chief or The Uncrowned King of Ireland in a great loop around the city, showing Parnell Dublin as if he were a living visitor, east into James Street, across the river at King’s Bridge, back along the northern side of the Liffey, running brown and dirty after the rains, over the river once more at Essex Bridge, down Parliament Street, close to the City Hall where they had started, back into College Green for a last look at the old Parliament building, north up Westmoreland Street and over the river again, past O’Connell’s statue at the bottom of Sackville Street and along Cavendish Row to the last resting place at Glasnevin Cemetery.”’
The last bottle of port was open now. Young James was looking tired. Johnny Fitzgerald had a slight smile on his face as if some other memories of the day had come back to him. Uncle Peter’s voice was slowing now, on the last lap of his marathon read.
‘“It was evening by the time the hearse finally stopped at the gates. A group of pallbearers, some of them Parnell’s colleagues in the Parliamentary party, carried his coffin to the grave. Mrs Parnell’s wreath was first into the ground, ‘My true love, my darling, my husband,’ followed by many more. The rest of the funeral service was read by a Reverend Fry from Manchester and the Reverend Vincent, the Chaplain of the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. Parnell’s last resting place was not far from O’Connell, the two ready to lead Ireland once more when the dead shall rise from their graves at the last day. The crowd, after a last look at the grave, peeled off to make their way back to their pubs or their tenements or their homes, ‘their homesteads’ as Parnell had called the peasant cabins at the time of the Land War in the early 1880s. Maud Gonne,”’ Uncle Peter stared balefully at Young James at this point, daring him to speak, ‘“told her friend Yeats later that evening that a shooting star had appeared in the sky during the actual burial itself. Both she and the poet were greatly impressed, discussing the astral significance for some hours. Another poet, Katherine Tynan, also a friend of Yeats, began a poem about the apparition.