I See Dead People

Despite the fact that we are both quite busy with our own respective work, the Gentleman Caller and I have resolved to see at least one site each week while we are here -- more, if possible. Usually, we can get in two, and sometimes we have something interesting available during the week such as the book launch for the person from whom we are subletting our apartment or a get-together of the Gentleman Caller's colleagues or dinner with other American ex-patriates (I like thinking of myself as that, especially while writing. It makes me feel like Hemingway, but without the bullfights.)

This past Saturday, which turned out to have lovely, autumnal weather, we went up to Glasnevin Cemetery, "Dublin's Necropolis." You find very few writers here. Joyce died in Switzerland. Wilde is buried in Pere Lachaise. Yeats out in Sligo. Glasnevin, instead, is where about every revolutionary connected to the city was buried, all right up near the entrance and the museum.

"Dublin's Necropolis" is an apt name, as you can see:

Dead people as far as the eye can see, and buried shoulder to shoulder. Their records show that over a million people are interred there, and a sizable percentage are in unmarked graves because they were poor. In the sections further back from the entrance, where you can see fewer "perpetual care" graves or graves marked as such, but clearly theirs was the discount version, the placement and disarray of the markers made me wonder if, after some time, older graves in which the coffins had sunk further down into the ground made way for newer graves on top.

Like I said, the cemetery is full of revolutionaries and the city is full of statues to the revolutionaries, so finding the grave of someone who had a statue that I had seen was a bit exciting -- more so, oddly, than just seeing the grave of a famous revolutionary, simply because I know so little about the people in question here. I mean, it isn't quite like seeing the graves of people whose letters I had been reading all day. It was more like connecting dots.

The most famous revolutionary in the cemetery, for whom they had an exhibit in the museum, and whose monument dominates the landscape, is Daniel O'Connell, the Emancipator. He lies in a crypt beneath this tower:

Here is his statue in City Hall (I don't think that he regularly work a toga to Parliament):

Here he is at the head of O'Connell Street:

By the way, O'Connell supported the abolition of slavery, and a certain other person took the stage with him in 1846, introduced to the crowd as "The Black O'Connell." Hence, a bit of my interest here.

Charles Stewart Parnell is perhaps not as celebrated a figure as O'Connell. His statue stands at the other end of O'Connell Street.:

I like his outfit.

Here is where his bones lie:

This is a big rock sitting on top of a small hillock and surrounded by a fence. You cannot get very close to it. The Gentleman Caller joked that he wanted me to take a picture of him sitting on it. That sounded like a cool idea and a great story as long as we did not get caught or were only escorted off of the premises by the guards. If we were fined or arrested, however, well that would be one damn expensive story. We choose to admire from afar.

Michael Collins lies in a particularly special place in the cemetery, right next to the museum there in the background:

He has perpetual care.

Funny thing is, his bust is not in the large and central St. Stephen's Green, like other revolutionaries. His is over in Merrion Park, halfway across the park from where Oscar Wilde's statue lounges.:

Note that he was only 32 years old when he died. He was killed by the other revolutionary faction who felt that his faction sold them out by allowing the British to keep the Ulster Counties, now Northern Ireland. This is the extent of my knowledge on the subject, but the Gentleman Caller pointed out that, as with our own Civil War, any discussion of civil war tends to complicate a heroic story of any nation's past.

You will also not that he doesn't look much like Liam Neeson.

One of the American ex-patriates who knows way more about contemporary Irish politics that I care to, said that one of the more liberal parties -- and they actually have several here, all running a candidate in the current presidential election -- is the Sinn Fein, which dates back to those days. He says that the party, however, has the lowest percentage of women supporters and that, for all of its liberalism, it tends to be quite butch. He attributed that gap to the hypermasculinity connected to the rebellion. You see that represented in the number of young men listed on the monuments, graves, and markers about the city. Of course, any woman who has dealt with left wing guys in any political context -- including the current U.S. Democratic party -- wouldn't be surprised at the sort of cult of masculinity surrounding these types of movements that end up in armed conflict.

One or two women, however, to get some recognition.  Here is Countess Markievicz, who was, like the men, both a soldier and politician during and after the Irish uprising:

Here is her bust at the center of St. Stephen's Green:

Anne Devlin is another woman connected with revolution who is buried here:

She died in the mid-19th century, but was connected with Robert Emmett, who attempted to lead an uprising in 1802. That was the Age of Revolution, after all, and the Irish were not to be left out. She was, according to the signs for children in the museum, Emmett's "housekeeper." According to the historian who wrote Emmett's biography, a little bit more than that. When the rebellion failed, she was tortured -- they make a lot of that in her biography -- but did not inform, even when Emmett asked her to in order to save herself. He died a very nasty death, and she died in obscure poverty. The only reason that she has a perpetual care grave is because a journalist interested in the Emmett story went looking for her and found her just after she had died and been buried in an unmarked grave. Money was raised later to have her reinterred with this marker.

She lived in Rathfarnam, which is along one of my longer jogging routes. One day, out huffing and puffing, I came across this:

That is a statue to Devlin in the town center. I also jogged along a suburban street named for her.Please note that her tits are not shiny with the polishing of various hands. The same cannot be said of most other statues of women.

The carvings on many of the graves in Glasnevin are quite lovely and interesting. You can see about every moment in the life of Christ depicted in bas relief. You also see something akin to the Book of Kells depicted in stone. Here are some of my favorites.:

The shamrocks may seem a bit twee, this being Ireland and knowing all of the kitschy crap about such things as sold to American tourists; but the shamrock shows up in lots of designs and I confess that I rather like it, not for the "Irishness" of it, although that is probably some of the sentimental appeal, so much as the shape. I just find the shape and the suggestion of green very soothing and lovely.

Just below the shamrock you see a symbol that looks like a dollar sign, but with three vertical slashes woven through the S. That symbol appeared on quite a number of graves, some more ornate than others. Does anyone know what that means? It doesn't appear to be the same sort of design as the Celtic knot sort.

This design caught my eye and I have to say that I laughed a bit at it.:

This is, obviously, the monument for a priest; but, is that the priest giving communion? No. That is the priest giving the Temperance pledge. The man buried beneath this monument worked with Father Mathew, who was the greatest temperance advocate in Ireland in the 19th century. He issued the temperance pledge thousands and thousands of times, sometimes to the same people (backsliding is to be expected and forgiven, of course). Some people didn't think that the pledge was even legitimate unless he issued it to you.

Father Matthew also has a statue on O'Connell Street.:

His statue stands amid about ten bars or restaurants with bars.

The fingers have been blown off. The story that they tell the tourists is that they were blown off in the Easter Rising of 1916. Some of the Gentleman Caller's colleagues said that is was they say about every gouge in every old building or statue in Dublin. In this case, I suspect vandals because the rest of the statues is unscathed.  Vandals, or very large pigeons.

By the way, a certain important figure known as the "Black O'Connell" also took the stage with Father Mathew.

I shall leave you with two things. First, graverobbers:

The museum had a diorama of sorts in its exhibit on the history of the cemetery, showing how the graverobbers did the deed. They dug a hole at an angle from behind the headstone down to the top of the coffin. Then, they broke open the top to get to the head. They put a noose around the neck -- or a hook! -- and drug the body out. How desperate must you have been to take that for a job?

Second, my favorite monument. This is the grave of an actor, depicting him in the role of Hamlet during the graveyard scene: