Glen Hansard’s remains lay in state on Monday in the old chapel of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, where mourners queued to pay their respects as friends and former band members filled the room with fiddles, flutes and songs. The wake gave fans a public place to say goodbye, and many stayed long enough to touch the casket, leave messages and hear the music drift through the building.
The choice of venue carried its own weight. The Royal Hospital Kilmainham was built in the 1680s as a retirement home for veteran soldiers, stopped being a military hospital in the 1920s and now houses the Irish Museum of Modern Art, a setting that turned the Glenn Hansard Funeral into both memorial and public gathering. Hansard’s closed wicker casket rested on a wooden table draped with a Tricolour, covered with greenery that included blackberry bushes, holly, cow parsley, moss, dock plants gone to seed, ferns, bracken and oak saplings in pots, while his guitars stood at the foot of the coffin like a guard of honour.
The music had the feel of a session more than a ceremony. The Coolin, Spancil Hill, the Parting Glass and Raglan Road were among the traditional tunes played, Colm Mac Com Iomaire performed airs including Carrickfergus and Liam Ó Maonlaí sang Mo Ghile Mear. That helped explain why Roisín Power Hackett, who said she had loved Hansard’s voice and lyrics since her mid-teens, could describe him as one of her heroes and a big part of her life. Dan Madigan, there on his way home after a holiday in Italy, put it more bluntly: “It wasn’t sad,” he said.
There was still one note of friction in a room otherwise built around reverence. A fan objected to the portraits of William III, Queen Anne and Charles II in the former dining hall and said they should come down in favour of Luke Kelly, Christy and Glen instead, a small but sharp reminder that public mourning can also become a conversation about who belongs on the walls and in memory. Around that debate, the rest of the gathering was quiet and deeply personal: mourners were not rushed through, many cried openly or in silence, most touched the casket before leaving, some touched the guitars, and fellow musicians occasionally left plectrums behind.
Six condolence books in the courtyard filled with messages from Liverpool, Hamburg, São Paulo, Sydney and Cootehill, including one line borrowed from Walt Whitman: “O Captain! my captain!” The wake made clear that Hansard’s death had already become something larger than a private loss, but the next question is the one the room itself could not answer: when he died, and how his farewell will be marked after Monday’s public tribute.
