Since we are being Robert Emmeted at every turn these days, who precisely was the note-taker at his trial, and where is the original account of his speech from the dock, wonders Kevin Myers.
It's long - well over 4,000 words - would have lasted well over half an hour, and would have exhausted the resources and the digital skills of all but the most tenacious of modern short-hand scribes.
Moreover, why on earth did his trial judge, Lord Norbury, let him go on for so long? Try talking to a judge for that length today, and your heels won't touch the ground as you're whisked out of the dock. But not merely did Norbury permit him to make this extravagant address, but he also - apparently - permitted a note-taker to be present to record faithfully every incendiary remark, every revolutionary sentiment, every subversive emotion, to be carried outside and preserved for posterity. Though not, funnily enough, in its original documentary form. How strange.
Emmet's trial was not the only time when the mystery note-taker managed to be present when some item appropriate to the Irish national canon was about to be uttered. So how does this deft witness to historical words know where and when to be? And who taught the note-taking sleuth all the arts of short-hand, long before anyone else in the world knew them? This early Pitman was to hand when Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill began uttering her lament for Art O'Leary, and scribbled down every line which followed. Couldn't have been easy, Art O'Leary lying there dead, and his widow keening and weeping. And Art's poor horse could hardly have been in a better state, having carried him from Millstreet, dropped him off at Carraig an Ime, and then setting a precedent for every Hollywood super-animal one and a half centuries later by rushing on to Macroom to raise the alarm, and then carrying Eileen back to the death bed. Side-saddle or astride? History doesn't relate.
It matters not at all that there is no record of this lament in the extensive O'Connell archive, or indeed an original copy anywhere. So its primary archival existence is not on paper, but within the nationalist psyche, and that is the only archive which really counts for some people.
And there it remains, a ringing indictment of the Penal Laws, and proof of how God-awful it was to be an Irish Catholic in the 18th century. And no doubt it was, unless you were an O'Connell.
This ubiquitous note-taker was also present when Col Bruce Smyth VC was lecturing recruits for the RIC at Listowel in June 1920, and he somehow or other managed to record the speech with nobody noticing. It appeared, apparently verbatim, some time later in The Irish Bulletin: which suggests either that the colonel was good enough to have kept a complete copy of his notes, and graciously sent them on to Kathleen Napoli McKenna, the editor of the republican Bulletin, (unlikely somehow), or the invisible short-hand sleuth did something similar.
It was not as long as Emmet's speech - for then Smyth would have had a real mutiny on his hands instead of the one-man walk-out by Jeremiah Mee: and since the latter was standing to attention, so couldn't have been taking a verbatim account of this speech of several hundred words, who was? "If a police barracks is burnt," Smyth allegedly said, "or if the barracks already occupied is not suitable, then the best house in the locality is to be commandeered, the occupants thrown out into the gutter. Let them lie there, the more the better. . .You may make mistakes occasionally, and innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot be helped, and you are bound to get the right person sometimes. The more you shoot, the better I shall like you, and I assure you that no policeman will get into trouble for shooting a man." These words earned entered the nationalist version of history, where, like the unattested lament for Art O'Leary, and Emmet's unproven speech from the dock, it has achieved a status of being an immutable and endlessly reiterated truth. Yet there is no documentary evidence at all that they were uttered, unlike the written order Smyth gave two days before the alleged Listowel address.
"A policeman is perfectly justified in shooting any man who is seen with arms and who does not immediately throw up his hands when ordered. A policeman is perfectly justified in shooting any man who he has given good reason to believe is carrying arms and who does not immediately throw up his hands when ordered." Note: police may only open fire on clear suspicion of arms, and only after a warning has been ignored. At a time when hundreds of policemen were being shot, these are not unreasonable orders, though of course, these did not enter the nationalist narrative of history. And Smyth's final part of Operational Order Number Five, June 17th, 1920, certainly didn't make it into that narrative: "I wish to make it perfectly clear to all ranks that I will not tolerate any 'reprisals'. They bring discredit to the police. I will deal most severely with any officer or man concerned in them." Of course, I say all this in vain. The Lament for Art O'Leary, Emmet's speech from the dock and Col Smyth's address to RIC recruits in Listowel are "facts" in nationalist historiography. They speak of the enchantments of victimhood and oppression; infinitely preferable to complex reality. All three will continue to cited ad infinitum as truths. Ah well.