It is true, as the man of the cemetery told us, that the burial place of Robert Emmet is unknown. Many people believe that his body was given to the surgeons of Trinity College after his execution, because if it had been given to his friends they would have erected a monument to mark his grave. No one of all the many people who admired and loved him has ever been able to obtain a clew to its disappearance. It is a popular belief, which the leaders of patriotic movements encourage, that the burial place is known and will be disclosed, as the man at the cemetery said, when the flag of freedom floats over “The Ould Sod,” but there is no good reason for such a romantic hope. Several of those who would be informed if there were any foundation for such an expectation have told me that it is all romance; that Emmet’s grave has never been discovered and probably never will be, because it doesn’t exist.
I went to the home of Robert Emmet in Marchalsea Lane, near the debtor’s prison, where he used to meet his fellow conspirators while organizing the insurrection of the United Irishmen in 1803. Emmet was a brilliant, eager boy, only twenty-four, and had been expelled from the University of Dublin for sympathy with the revolution of 1798. He went to Paris, remained there for a while until things had quieted down, and then returned to Dublin, where he conceived a rash project to seize the castle and the fort. The authorities were taken entirely by surprise, but the country contingent which had been promised to support him failed to arrive, and Emmet, with less than a hundred men, armed with pikes—simply spearheads mounted on the ends of poles—marched against the castle and, of course, were immediately overcome. Many of his followers, who fled to their homes, were killed at their own doors, and Emmet became a fugitive.
Robert Emmet was born in Dublin in 1778 and was a playmate and schoolfellow of Thomas Moore, the poet. His brother, Thomas Addis Emmet, born in 1764, was involved in the revolution of 1798 and fled to America, where he became eminent at the bar of New York, serving at one time as attorney-general of that State. He left several sons and grandsons.
When Robert Emmet escaped, after the failure of his foolish attack upon the castle, he took refuge among friends in the Wicklow Hills, south of Dublin, to await an opportunity to cross over to France. Against their protests he went at night to say good-by to his sweetheart, Sarah Curran, daughter of the famous advocate, was arrested and tried for high treason. He conducted his own defense with extraordinary ability. His closing speech stands as one of the greatest examples of eloquence in the English language. He was condemned to death and hanged outside of St. Catherine’s Church, upon the spot where Lord Kilwarden, an eminent judge of the highest integrity, was killed by some of Emmet’s men while returning with his nephew and daughter from a visit to the country.
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.