Funeral and Oration
On arrival in Dublin, Rossa's remains were taken to the Pro-Cathedral and lay before the High Altar for one night, with a guard of Irish Volunteers. They then lay in state in City Hall, Dublin, again with a guard of honour, until the funeral. Thousands of Volunteers followed the hearse to Glasnevin Cemetery and hundreds of thousands lined the route.
Following the interment, Pearse delivered his oration. He spoke "on behalf of a new generation that has been re-baptised in the Fenian faith" and called on the Irish people to stand together for the achievement of the freedom of Ireland. And, he said, "we know only one definition of freedom: it is Tone's definition, it is Mitchel's definition, it is Rossa's definition" (that is, an Irish Republic). The tone of the oration made it very clear that an attempt would soon be made to establish an Irish Republic by force of arms. The oration concluded with a challenge to the "Defenders of this Realm":
They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! - they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.
Read more about this topic: Ireland Unfree Shall Never Be At Peace
Famous quotes containing the words funeral and/or oration:
“Rome, the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven’s own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter’s field of the newspapers’ back pages.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)