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Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh And white were her lip and cheek
Despair had drank up her last wild tear, And her brow was damp and chill,
And they often felt at her heart with fear, For its ebb was all but still.
Emmet was brought to his place of execution at Thomas Street in Dublin where his ill- fated rising had begun and ended.
It is told in Dublin lore that ‘his dignity and courage in the face of his imminent and grisly destiny were immense and that in death he gave honour to the rope’. For it had been decreed that on that fateful day, 20 September 1803, “bold” Robert Emmet was first to be hanged (cut down while still alive, disembowelled, and chopped up-as some accounts claim) then his head cut off and held up to the gawping crowd as a traitor! It is further told in the tradition that he took a half an hour to die and when his head was cut off -with a knife, blood seeped into the gutter and was lapped up by dogs-giving rise to a popular theory that he was still alive when beheaded.
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