And divested of thorns, it remained in my breast.
Its fragrance refreshed me, inspiring with love,
Till that fragrance was drawn to the regions above.
And now every wish of my heart’s to repose,
In that region of love with my own little rose.
In the Shan Van Vocht of March, 1896, à propos of a letter of James Hope’s therein first published, we find an interesting editorial note: “James Hope brought his wife and younger children up from Belfast to Dublin as soon as he undertook the work of organising under Emmet, this not without a reason. Rose Hope was a valuable and courageous ally in her patriot husband’s work, and before the northern rising had helped to provide the United Men with arms and ammunition, carrying them backwards and forwards through the country as she went a marketing. The same good work she daringly undertook in Dublin, and had some narrow escapes as she threaded her way through the streets with the arms carefully hidden under her cloak along with her baby. This younger child was called Robert Emmet, after the patriot.” Another child was called after Henry Joy McCracken, and another Luke, after Mr. Luke Teeling. For Jamie Hope was much attached to the McCrackens and the Teelings, for both of which families he had worked.
Some of Rosie’s adventures are related by her husband. They occurred during Jamie’s absence in the North with Russell when they were trying to get Ulster to rise in support of Emmet:
“In 1803, a short time after Henry Howley’s arrest, and the death of Hanlon, who was shot by him, while the soldiers were bringing Hanlon’s body on a door, through a street in the Liberty, my wife was passing, with her youngest child in her arms, having under her cloak, a blunderbuss and a case of pistols, which she was taking to the house of Denis Lambert Redmond, who suffered afterwards. She stepped into a shop, and when the crowd had passed, she went on, and executed her orders. On another occasion, she was sent to a house in the Liberty, where a quantity of ball-cartridges had been lodged, to carry them away, to prevent ruin being brought on the house and its inhabitants. She went to the house, put them in a pillow-case, and emptied the contents into the canal, at that part of it which supplies the basin.”
“At the death of Pitt, the system underwent a change. The Castle spies were discharged, and the State prisoners set at liberty. My wife sent in a memorial to the Duke of Bedford, in her own name, acknowledging that I had fought on the side of the people, and had been driven like thousands, unwillingly to do so.” As a consequence, Hope and his family were allowed to return to the North.
Rosie Hope had been lying for more than fifteen years in her last bed in Mallusk graveyard when Dr. Madden first met Jamie Hope in the flesh. And yet he noted that when Hope spoke of his wife it seemed “as if he felt her spirit was hovering over him, and that it was not permitted to him to give expression to the praise which rises to his lips when her name is mentioned. There is something of refinement—rare as it is pleasing to contemplate, in the nature of his attachment—in the ties which bound him to that amiable, exemplary, and enthusiastic creature; for such she is represented to have been by those who knew her, amongst whom was Miss McCracken, of Belfast.”