Kingstown, Sunday, October 11th, 1891, 6.30am:A crowd including the young poet William Butler Yeats and JK Bracken, a founder of the new Gaelic Athletic Association, stand in the driving rain watching the mailboat, the paddle steamer, Ireland, docking at Carlisle Pier.
Yeats is waiting for his friend, Maud Gonne.
On deck are the funeral party who have brought home the remains of Charles Stewart Parnell. He died in Brighton on Tuesday night, from rheumatic fever, hyperexia and failure of the heart’s action. The party includes a brother, Henry, a sister, Emily Dickinson, and 18 of the 31 MPs who supported their chief when the Irish Party split.
Sailors carry the deal case containing the lead and oak coffin ashore and place it in the waiting train. There is a delay while the American mails are loaded.
Westland Row, 7.30am:Twelve gaels discard the packing case and carry the coffin to a hearse.
Onlookers, some with penknives, hack the case to pieces to obtain mementos.
The cortege, flanked by gaels carrying camans draped with black and green ribbons and led by the Workingmen’s Club band playing the Dead March from Saul, proceeds along Great Brunswick Street and College Street. It pauses outside the old parliament house in College Green and then continues through Dame Street and Parliament Street and across the river to Church Street.
James Stephens, the founder of the IRB and another veteran fenian, John O’Leary, are in the fourth carriage. Mrs Dickinson notes that the huge mass of human beings lining the streets are silent, apart from their sobs.
St Michan's, 9am:The funeral service in the ancient church is read by the rector, Canon Thomas Long, and the Dublin born rector of All Souls, Anscoat, Manchester, Rev George Fry.
City Hall, 10am:The building is covered with black drapes. Scrolls attached carry Parnell's alleged dying wish: "Let my love be given to my colleagues and the Irish people". The crowds have been swelled by people from the provinces who have come on special trains. Travellers from the south east have enjoyed an excursion fare from the Wicklow and Wexford Railway Company. Many of them are "hillside men", the small tenant farmers and labourers to whom Parnell appealed for support after the split.
Wreaths carried into the hall include those from his wife, Katherine, who was confined to bed at home, and Clare and Kate O’Shea who are, in fact, Parnell’s biological daughters. A Cork woman brings a simple wreath of ivy leaves. Some messages reflect the bitterness of the split.
The card on the wreath from the National League in Belfast has the words, “murdered” and “avenge”. The one on the GAA wreath reads “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. Another reads “hounded to death”.
The coffin is placed on a catafalque before the statue of Daniel O’Connell. Gaels and men from the fire brigade mount a guard. Up to 30,000 people pour in. Adjacent rooms are commandeered to store the flowers they bring.
Some believe that Parnell is still alive. The body had begun to decompose soon after his death and only a few people had seen it.
Dame Street and Grafton Street, 10.30am:The rain continues to pour down.
Up to 160 carriages and cars are in place for the journey to the cemetery. Behind them, in St Stephen’s Green and Harcourt Street, members of trade associations, clubs and societies are being marshalled by gaels. Thirty bands are interspersed. Thousands will march and 150,000 will watch. It will be the greatest funeral in Dublin since O’Connell’s in ’47.
Fr O’Malley from Westland Row church, the chaplain to the lord mayor, the Right Honourable Joseph Meade, is the only Catholic priest visible.
Prospect Cemetery, Glasnevin, Noon:Crowds begin to arrive, some carrying lunches. They inspect the grave on a mound in an area known as the "poor ground". The site has been chosen by the funeral committee and given free by the cemetery board.
City Hall, 2.30pm:Sunshine has replaced the rain. The pubs are closed. The men in the crowd bare their heads. The funeral procession, led by 28 MPs and flanked by gaels, begins a circuitous journey to Glasnevin. An elderly horse named "Home Rule" is walked behind the hearse, with boots reversed in the stirrups. The cortege travels west to Thomas Street where Lord Edward Fitzgerald was fatally wounded in 1798 and Robert Emmet was hanged in 1803. It crosses over Kingsbridge and returns along the northern quays before recrossing the river to enter Parliament Street and Dame Street again.
In Sackville Street, ladies watch from upstairs windows. A group on the platform of Nelson’s Pillar have a bird’s eye view. The hearse, drawn by six horses, crosses Great Britain Street and enters Rutland Square, East.
Most of the Justin McCarthyites, the MPs who rejected Parnell, have stayed away, wisely perhaps, but one, the Fermanagh Methodist, Jeremiah Jordan, is observed near Findlater’s Church.
Prospect Cemetery, 5.30pm:A bright moon shines in a cloudless sky as the cortege arrives. The lead band plays an Irish lament. The DMP struggle to open a passage for the hearse. Gaels form a cordon around the chief mourners. The coffin is placed in the grave. Rev Fry and the chaplain to the Rotunda hospital, Rev MC Vincent, conduct the burial service.
Men, including Fry, cry openly. Some people including Maud Gonne and the poet, Katherine Tynan, see a bright object, a meteor or a fiery globe, shoot across the sky.
The crowd cover the grave with a mound of flowers so that the air is thick with perfume. Then they slip away, many to walk to the waiting trains.
7pm:The cemetery staff close the gates.