Leaving Home: On the Road to Exile

On the day they were to set out for Liverpool, a strange scene was witnessed. The cavalcade was accompanied by a concourse of neighbours and sympathisers. They had to pass within a short distance of the ancient burial-ground, where “the rude forefathers” of the valley slept. They halted, turned aside, and proceeded to the grass-grown cemetery. Here in a body they knelt, flung themselves on the graves of their relatives, which they reverently kissed again and again, and raised for the last time the Irish eaoine or funeral wail. Then - some of them pulling tufts of grass hich they placed in their bosoms - they resumed their way on the road to exile.

A.M. Sullivan
New Ireland
1877