Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland Vol. I

By Piaras Beaslai

Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland, which was first published in 1926 as two volumes, was written by Piaras Beaslai, a Major-General in the Sinn Fein army who was an intimate friend of Michael Collins and his senior in the inner councils of the most extreme section of the party.

Michael Collins (1890-1922) was an Irish revolutionary, soldier and politician who was a leading figure in the early-20th-century Irish struggle for independence. He was Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State from January 1922 until his assassination in August 1922. Collins’ family had republican connections reaching back to the 1798 rebellion. He moved to London in 1906 and became a member of the London GAA, through which he became associated with the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Gaelic League. He returned to Ireland in 1916 and fought in the Easter Rising. He was subsequently imprisoned in the Frongoch internment camp as a prisoner of war, but was released in December 1916.

After his release, Collins rose through the ranks of the Irish Volunteers and Sinn Féin. He became a Teachta Dála for South Cork in 1918, and was appointed Minister for Finance in the First Dáil. He was present when the Dáil convened on 21 Jan. 1919 and declared the independence of the Irish Republic. In the ensuing War of Independence, he was Director of Organisation and Adj.-Gen. for the Irish Volunteers, and Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army. He gained fame as a guerrilla warfare strategist, planning and directing many successful attacks on British forces.

After the July 1921 ceasefire, Collins and Arthur Griffith were sent to London by Eamon de Valera to negotiate peace terms. A provisional government was formed under his chairmanship in early 1922 but was soon disrupted by the Irish Civil War, in which Collins was commander-in-chief of the National Army. He was shot and killed in an ambush by anti-Treaty forces on 22 Aug. 1922.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Borodino Books
• Release date: Jul 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789126891

Piaras Beaslai

Piaras Beaslai (1881-1965) was an Irish author, playwright, biographer and translator, who was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, fought in the Easter Rising and served as a member of Dail Eireann. He was born Percy Frederick Beazley in Liverpool, England on February 15, 1881 to Irish Catholic parents, Patrick Langford Beazley and Nannie Hickey. His father Patrick Langford Beazley, from Killarney, County Kerry, moved to Egremont, Cumbria and was the editor of The Catholic Times newspaper for 40 years. Beaslai was educated at St. Xavier’s Jesuit College in Liverpool, where he developed his keen interest in Irish; by the time he was aged 17 his Irish proficiency was exceptional. Following graduation, he was encouraged to begin Irish poetry by Tadhg O Donnchadha. Beaslai followed his father’s footsteps into journalism when he began working for the local Wallasey News, and in 1906 he moved to Dublin. Within a year he became a freelance writer for the Irish Peasant, Irish Independent, Freeman’s Journal and Express. He was offered a permanent position with Independent Newspapers, as assistant leader writer and special reporter for the Dublin Evening Telegraph. He wrote regularly for the Freeman’s Journal, including a daily half-column in Irish. After his early introduction to Irish poetry he became involved in staging Irish-language amateur drama at the Oireachtas annual music festival. Beaslai began to write both original works and adaptations from foreign languages. One of these works, Eachtra Pheadair Schlemiel (1909), was translated from German into Irish. He continued to write poetry and between 1913-1939 also wrote many plays. He wrote two books about his comrade Michael Collins: Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland (2 volumes, 1926) and Michael Collins: Soldier and Statesman (1937). He won a gold medal at the Tailteann Literary Awards in 1928. Beaslai died in Dublin on June 22, 1965, aged 84.

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Text originally published in 1926 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

MICHAEL COLLINS AND THE MAKING OF A NEW IRELAND

VOLUME I

BY

PIARAS BÉASLAÍ

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

PREFACE TO POPULAR EDITION 5

ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA 6

LIST OF PLATES 7

INTRODUCTION 8

CHAPTER I—Birth and Early Years 12

CHAPTER II—Early Years in London 18

CHAPTER III—The Irish Volunteers 25

CHAPTER IV—The Coming Rising 40

CHAPTER V—Easter Week 1916 48

CHAPTER VI—Frongoch Prison Camp 64

CHAPTER VII—The Turning of the Tide 70

January—April, 1917 70

CHAPTER VIII—The National Resurgence 82

April—October, 1917 82

CHAPTER IX—The German Plot 92

October 1917—May 1918 92

CHAPTER X—Michael Collins in the Gap 104

May—June, 1918 104

CHAPTER XI—Sinn Fein Suppressed 117

June—November, 1918 117

CHAPTER XII—Dáil Éireann 127

December, 1918—January, 1919 127

CHAPTER XIII—A Chapter of Escapes 136

January—March, 1919 136

CHAPTER XIV—Minister for Finance 150

April, 1919 150

CHAPTER XV—Ireland’s Appeal to the Peace Conference 158

April—June, 1919 158

CHAPTER XVI—Organising Intelligence 162

June—August, 1919 162

CHAPTER XVII—The National Loan 172

CHAPTER XVIII—More Escapes 182

October—November, 1919 182

CHAPTER XIX—Guerilla Warfare 189

November—December, 1919 189

CHAPTER XX—Spies and Informers 196

January—March, 1920 196

CHAPTER XXI—Settling the Irish Question 205

January—March, 1920 205

CHAPTER XXII—Collapse of English Rule 215

April—May, 1920 215

CHAPTER XXIII—The Murder Plot 221

May, 1920 221

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 226

PREFACE TO POPULAR EDITION

IN presenting to the public a popular edition of Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland, I desire to express my gratitude for the favourable reception accorded to my work. I received letters of appreciation from readers all over the world, including a number of sympathetic Englishmen. I have also to thank my critics both for the kind things they had to say, and the shortcomings which they pointed out, of which nobody is more conscious than myself.

I feel bound to acknowledge the general broadmindedness with which English reviewers approached a work which must have contained much that was distasteful to them. I have read over 150 reviews of my book, some bitterly hostile, but I only met with three which I regarded as unfair and malicious; and, strange to say, these were all written by Irishmen—and not by opponents of the Treaty. Many who differed strongly from me on the Treaty issue were kind enough to congratulate me on the fairness of my presentations of the facts.

A few slips and omissions which have been pointed out to me are dealt with in the additional Corrigenda.

It is an interesting fact that a book has just appeared from Brigadier-General Crozier, the organiser and first Chief of the Auxiliaries, in which most of my charges against the Black and Tans and the British administration in Ireland in 1920-21 are corroborated in detail.

PIARAS BÉASLAÍ.

ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA

Vol. I., page 1, line 7.—For town read towns.

Vol. I., page 28.—Delete line 17.

Vol. I., page 59.—Mr. Joseph Stanley, of the Gaelic Press, also printed our publications at this time, and was put out of business by the military authorities.

Vol. I., page 80.—For Fourth Dublin Brigade, read Fourth Battalion of the Dublin Brigade.

Vol. I., page 93.—The name of the Hibernian Rifles, who also took an honourable part in the Insurrection, was omitted from the original proclamation, but was inserted in a reprinted proclamation on Easter Tuesday.

Vol. I., page 104.—For P. Colivet, read M. P. Colivet.

Vol. I., page 267.—For trust read thrust.

Vol. I., page 310.—The captors of Araglen Barracks belonged to Cork No. 2 Brigade, and were headed by Michael Fitzgerald.

Vol. I., page 332, line 3.—For son of James Lawless, Secretary of the Dublin County Council, read son of the late Frank Lawless, T.D., one of the Easter Week leaders.

Vol. I., page 338.—The Volunteers in the fray at Fermoy were led by the late Liam Lynch.

Vol. I., page 376, bottom line.—For was read is. Vol. I., page 391, line 5.—For the English read The English Press.

Vol. I., page 420.—Eamonn Price was Assistant Director, and later Director of Organisation.

Vol. I., page 430.—General Crozier, then head of the Auxiliaries, in his Impressions and Recollections, declares that. Mac Curtain was murdered by Irish policemen, not Sinn Feiners.

Vol. I., page 448.—General Crozier, in his Impressions and Recollections, admits the existence of the murder gang, or, as he calls it, the vicious gang.

LIST OF PLATES

Michael Collins

Michael Collins in 1922

Arthur Griffith

Major-General Piaras Beaslai

Michael Collins and Harry Boland on the Hurling Field

Members of the First Dáil Eireann, January 21st, 1919

Vaughan’s Hotel

Typical Message of Collins to Chief Intelligence Officer Tobin, 1921

Facsimile Reproduction of Authentic Letter

INTRODUCTION

WHILE Ireland was still staggering under the blow of Michael Collins’s death, and distracted by the horrors of civil war, I undertook to write the life of my dead friend. I undertook it as a labour of love, because I felt that circumstances had placed me in a position of peculiar advantage to do him justice, and to do justice to the movement of which he was the child, the embodiment, and the full expression. There were many abler writers than I, but none of these had the same intimate knowledge, none could speak with the same confidence of what Collins stood for, the atmosphere of ideas in which he lived, the spirit and outlook of himself and of the band of workers who were his colleagues and comrades. For, that movement, of which he was so great and splendid a part, made up my whole life for many years, from childhood until the tragedy of his death:

"Dom is dleacht a leacht do líonadh,

Dom is córa a sgeol do sgaoileadh."

There were those who wished me to produce at once a work evolved in hot haste, amid the bitter passions aroused by the Treaty controversy and the Civil War, in which the heroic personality of Michael Collins should be exploited in the interests of the Irish Free State, then struggling for existence. Such an idea was’ abhorrent to me. It would be a poor monument to a great man to produce, under the name of his biography, a piece of party propaganda, or an officially-inspired representation of facts, in support of any side in ephemeral controversies. I determined to wait until the furies of the Civil War had abated, and people, released from an atmosphere of passion and violence, could make some effort to view the story of Ireland’s last great effort for freedom in historical retrospect. Meanwhile I confined my activities to collecting material for the biography.

In 1923 I resigned my membership of Dail Eireann, and retired from political life. In 1924 I left the National Army, and then, and not till then, free from official censorship, did I put pen to paper.

For two years I have laboured single-handed at this task, striving, under great difficulties, to provide adequate data for the future historian of a great period in the story of Ireland.

I carried out this work under depressing circumstances. The fine spirit of comradeship which had bound together all the fellow-workers in the contest with England had been destroyed by the collapse of national unity. Cleavage was followed by general disintegration. The fine enthusiasm which inspired the heroisms of the struggle against English rule had been dimmed and quenched by the ugly happenings of the Civil War; and the country had relapsed into a mood of cynicism in which the lofty ideals of a few years before met with small response. Many people seemed anxious to forget the brave and brilliant achievements of the years 1916 to 1921.

Working in such an atmosphere was, in some ways, a discouragement; but it was also an incentive. In placing on record those facts that were not known, and those that had been forgotten, so that my countrymen and the world might understand our ideas and our outlook, the faith that inspired us, and what that faith enabled us to do—in doing this, I felt I was doing work which might be of service to the nation, which might help to clear away confusions and controversies, and inspire further unselfish service for Ireland in the old spirit, with the old ideal. That ideal, the ideal of Michael Collins, was, as his latest writings show as unequivocally as his earliest, a free, united, un-partitioned, Irish-speaking Ireland, proudly preserving its historic culture and its national integrity, freed not only from English military occupation and political domination, but from the predominance of English influence, whether in the social, intellectual, economic, political or cultural spheres—in short, an Ireland as Irish as Denmark is Danish.

The revolutionary struggle which began in 1916 and ended in 1922 was only the latest phase of a movement which began many years earlier. To give an adequate history of the entire movement I should go back much further than the time of Michael Collins. I should go back to the last century, to the founding of the Gaelic League, and the early work of William Rooney and Arthur Griffith. The intellectual father of this movement was Thomas Davis, the greatest of all thinkers on Irish problems, the first to formulate a clear, coherent philosophy of Irish Ireland. The movement also owed something to the inspiration of the Fenians. Michael Collins was a child of that movement. He was a schoolboy when the gospel of Irish Ireland was being preached by Douglas Hyde, MacNeill and Pearse, by Griffith and Rooney. His boyish mind was fed with tales of the Fenians, stirred with Irish patriotic poems and writings. He was the inheritor of a great and indestructible tradition, deep-rooted in the soul of the Irish nation, a tradition that seven hundred years of English force and policy had vainly striven to uproot, a tradition that seems almost supernatural in its obstinate immortality. Michael Collins was a great reaper where others had sown.

In this book, as I say, I have dealt with the latest phase of a great movement, perhaps the most difficult phase, for it was the time when ideas were translated into actions; and vital ideas, translated into popular action, become clouded and obscured. The difficulties of the contemporary historian of a revolutionary period are many, and in this case they were quite exceptional. The nature of our work was such that, of much of it no records could be kept; many records were captured by the enemy; many were lost or destroyed in the course of the war; and many documents were burned for safety. A number of the principal actors in the drama are dead. For a great many details I had to depend upon the memories of a few men and women; and human memory, even in regard to events so recent, I have found a very fallible thing. I had also to discount the tendency of some persons, to exaggerate the importance of events or incidents of which they had knowledge, or to exaggerate the importance of the part played by themselves in such transactions. I can confidently assert that if any person who had not been a participant in the struggle, and had no means of judging the truth of what he was told, were to compile a history from personal narratives, he would publish many misstatements and many extravagances.

I have endeavoured, with sincere and conscientious effort, to place on record all the essential facts, as far as I knew or could ascertain them, of the life-work of Collins, and the final phase of the Irish struggle for freedom from 1916 to 1922. What immediately concerned Collins I have dealt with in what some may think exhaustive detail. In particular I have sought to place on record the services of many humble, but effective, fellow-workers.

In giving a presentation of Michael Collins, of his personality, his everyday life and his work, I aimed, not at summing up my impressions in a vivid pen-picture, but at giving the greatest possible number of data for the reader to judge by.

I had no desire to stir up the dying embers of recent controversies, and endeavoured, as far as possible, to speak nothing but kind words of my fellow-Irishmen. In describing follies and crimes against the nation; in defending the memory of a great man, unfairly treated and maligned, I have, I think, carried charity very far; but some plain speaking was necessary.

I have had to record many atrocities by agents of the English Government in Ireland; but it would be unfair to hold the English people responsible for these outrages, of which they were kept in ignorance. I had and have no enmity to the English people; for their many fine qualities and great achievements I have a warm admiration. The ground of our quarrel with them was their claim to possess and exploit our country, to which they had and have no right whatever. All we demanded was to be left alone. English civilisation and culture are, no doubt, great things, and English methods of government seem to suit the English people; but under them our country decayed, physically, socially, industrially, economically, in wealth, in population, in culture and in every way. We believed it was desirable to get rid of them, and were never convinced to the contrary by the English arguments of batons, bullets and bayonets. In the end we learned to meet brute force and cunning with their own weapons, and baffle them; and the outrages of the Black and Tans proved ineffective.

In that ugly warfare I gladly acknowledge that the ordinary English soldiers, for the most part, behaved in a kindly and generous manner in the unpleasant tasks they had to perform.

I have to thank the Irish Free State Government, the relatives, and some of the friends of Michael Collins, for giving me access to various important letters and documents in their possession. I have to thank the New York American for permission to quote from some of Michael Collins’s latest writings, contributed to its pages. I have to thank over a hundred persons for information supplied, which has been used in this work.

In using Irish names and titles which have become familiar, such as Seamus and Dail Eireann, I have omitted the accents. It has long been my opinion that too many accents are used in the conventional spelling of Irish, and that we could advantageously learn a lesson from Scots Gaelic, in which accents are only used when they are necessary to avoid ambiguity.

I have no more to say. I have done my best in a difficult task, in the hope that this true story of a great Irishman, a brave and loyal servant of his country, may be of service to Ireland.

PIARAS BÉASLAÍ.

Sandycove, Co. Dublin.

1st September, 1922.

CHAPTER I—Birth and Early Years

ON the Southern seaboard of Ireland there is a country of hills and dells, with a rock-bound coast indented by numerous creeks and inlets, which was known in the history of Ireland as Cairbre, or Carbery, in the County of Cork. Its population of fishers and farmers, and the merchants of its town, are mostly persons of pure Gaelic descent; the older people speak the Gaelic tongue. There was in that neighbourhood but one foreign settlement, the town of Bandon, that Protestant stronghold on whose gates Dean Swift proposed to inscribe:—

"Turk, Jew or Atheist

May enter here,

But not a Papist."

It was from the blood of the Gaels of these sea-side hills, custodians of the language and traditions of the ancient ruling race, that Mícheál O Coileáin, known in English as Michael Collins, was sprung. The tribe to which he belonged was one that had been rooted in the soil for countless generations, which cannot be said of any other chosen leader of the nation for the past 250 years, with the exception of Daniel O’Connell. The O Coileáins were formerly lords of Uí Chonaill, now Upper and Lower Connelloe, in Co. Limerick, and Michael could claim to be descended from a tribe of chieftains whose prowess in warfare won high renown.

In the ancient topographical poem of Giolla na Naomh O hUidhrin, there is the following reference to the family:—

Uí Conaill catha Mumhan

Toirteamhail an tiomsughadh

Ratheaghlach ris nach dual dréim

Sluagh cathfeadhnach O cCuiléin.

"The Ui Conaill of the battalion of Munster Ample is the gathering

A great family with whom it is not fitting to contend

Is the battle-trooped host of the O Coileáins."

He could also claim to be of bardic blood.

One of his ancestral relatives was Seán O Coileáin, the celebrated eighteenth century poet, whose fine Lament over the Ruins of the Abbey of Timoleague has been made familiar to English readers by the translations of Mangan and Sir Samuel Ferguson.

About four miles from the prosperous little town of Clonakilty on the one side, and three miles from the beautiful, cliff-surrounded bay of Roscarbery on the other, is a small cluster of houses at a meeting of roads known as Sam’s Cross. It is called after a highwayman of old days, one Sam Wallace, who carried on business at the crossroads, a kind of modern Robin Hood, who, it is told, gave to the poor what he took from the rich. Here is a veritable nest of the O Coileáin tribe. An ancient tavern, one of the oldest in Ireland, with a signboard painted with a quaint old inscription, has been in the possession of the Collinses for generations, and is at present occupied by a cousin of the dead Chief. On the other side of the road is the house in which his mother was born. A short distance away is a wooded hill known to present day English-speakers as Woodfield, but more correctly called by the older people Pál Beag, which may mean small wall or small paling. It was in a house on the slope of this hill, now a ruined memento of the Black-and-Tan Terror, that Mícheál O Coileáin first saw the light.

That so remarkable a son should have a remarkable father is not, perhaps, surprising, and old Michael Collins was a very remarkable man indeed. Born in 1815, he married late in life, and Michael, the youngest son of a large and vigorous family, was born when his father had attained the age of 75. The elder Michael Collins was a farmer; he was also a builder and carpenter, whose skill won him a high local reputation; but he possessed qualifications which one does not usually associate with these useful occupations. He was a classical scholar with a good knowledge of Greek, Latin and French, and—what is an unusual combination of talents—a strong bent for mathematics. He was, moreover, a man of wide reading, a vast store of general information, and an extraordinarily retentive memory, even in his old age. He was equally at home in the English and the Irish languages. He owed his exceptional education to one of the old-world hedge schoolmasters, Diarmuid O Súilliobháin, a cousin on his mother’s side, of whom he used to tell that he graduated in a Belgian university, and was a personal acquaintance of Wolfe Tone’s. Through this remarkable father of his, young Michael Collins could bridge a century and establish touch with that former great and ill-fated effort to throw off the English yoke in 1798.

Old Michael Collins was sixty years of age when he married, in 1875, Mary Anne O’Brien, daughter of James O’Brien, of Sam’s Cross, then a girl of 20. She was a handsome girl, who was left fatherless at the age of 16, and had to care for a delicate mother. The inequality of years did not prevent the marriage from being a very happy one, and eight children were born of it, Margaret, John, Johanna, Mary, Helena, Patrick, Kate, and finally Michael, who was born in 1890. All of the progeny were exceptionally strong, vigorous and intelligent; all save Michael are alive today.

Being the youngest of the family, it was only natural that Michael should be the pet of his elder brothers and sisters. As often happens with the youngest children in large Irish families, the care of him devolved largely on his eldest sisters, Maggie, Hannie and Mary, who showered on him a wealth of affection. He is described as having been an exceptionally handsome and good-tempered baby.

At the early age of four and a half years Michael was sent to school to the Lisavaird National School, then taught by the late Mr. Denis Lyons. Denis Lyons was a remarkable man, and his influence at that early age had much to do with forming Michael’s patriotic ideas. Lyons was an old member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, once better known as the Fenians, and advocated the ideals of this body—the seeking of the independence of Ireland—by armed force, if necessary, in the face of strong opposition from the local clergy and other influential persons. The courage required to do this on the part of a National Schoolmaster, at that time, will hardly be appreciated by the younger generation. In manner Lyons was rough. Like most of the old type of teachers, he was a stern disciplinarian, who believed in the adage Spare the rod and spoil the child. His sternness did not awaken any rebelliousness in young Michael’s breast, and in after life he always spoke of his old master with affection.

It is a remarkable fact, and a commentary on the state of the country at the time, that, though Michael’s father and mother and most of the older folks of the district spoke Irish, he and his brothers and sisters were allowed to grow up without any knowledge of the language. It was not taught in the school, and at home his parents only spoke Irish among themselves when they did not wish the children to know what they were saying. This state of affairs was a common one in the Irish-speaking districts, where a tradition survived from the days of famines and evictions that parents were handicapping their children’s chances in life by bringing them up Irish-speaking. However, Irish was in the air in the district, and the very English of the people abounded in expressive Irish words and phrases, for which there are often no English equivalent. All these words and phrases Michael acquired, and they were continually on his lips in after life, and up to the day of his death.

Michael proved an apt scholar, with a taste for knowledge, but the National School education of these days was poor pabulum for so active a brain. Close to the school was a forge to which the little boy used to pay regular visits after school hours, attracted by something more appealing to his imagination than the dry lists of names and dates of the school curriculum. The blacksmith, James Santry (still happily living), was the son of a man who had forged pikes in ‘48 and ‘67 in that very forge, and grandson of a man who took part in the rising of 1798 at the Big Cross in Shannonvale. Many a tale he had to tell of the fights and plots of Fenian days, and Smith O’Brien’s gallant and hopeless attempt at insurrection. One can imagine how the ardent heart of little Michael beat, how his eyes shone as he saw passing before his mind’s eye those episodes of patriot heroism and adventure. No doubt, like many another boy, he dreamed of emulating their exploits; unlike most other boys, he lived to surpass them.

That he had already some faint conception of his destiny is shown by the fact that, discussing the question of evictions with ‘his schoolfellows, he pointed to the homes of the land grabbers, and spoke of the time when he would see justice done and restitution made.

If any boy had a chance of being spoiled it was Michael. At home he was the pet of the family, at school an immense favourite with his school-fellows. He excelled in sports and in class, yet his kindly and generous nature was in no way affected by this. He took a peculiar pleasure, unusual in one so young, in the company of aged people, and was never tired of listening to stories of the olden times.

In 1899, when Michael was nine years of age, a new house was built for the family on the site of the old. Here Mrs. Collins was able to indulge her passion for flowers, a love which Michael shared.

The education which Michael received at school played a much smaller part in shaping his mind and developing his character than home influences. His father was, as mentioned, a man of scholarly bent and intellectual tastes, and all his family were fond of reading—a very unusual attribute of a country family in County Cork at that time, or even nowadays. Still more remarkable, their reading was not merely trashy fiction, but the best books obtainable. Michael, from an early age, was an earnest student of Thomas Davis, probably the wisest, most farseeing, and all-embracing of all Irish leaders and teachers in his nationalism, and there can be no doubt that the teachings of that sage and patriot profoundly influenced his outlook in after life. In ‘his broad, all-embracing love of the Irish people he was at one with Davis.

Wolfe Tone and Emmet were also heroes of his, and he loved to hear his uncle sing songs of them. He took great interest in the writings of A. M. and T. D. Sullivan, particularly their records of the struggles and sacrifices of the Fenians. The novels of Banim and Kickham, with their vivid, human pictures of Irish life, also appealed to him. His brother Sean recalls seeing him cry bitterly when reading Kickham’s Knocknagow. Among others he read many of the novels of Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, and the poetry of Moore. He was noted for special fondness for poetry, which was curiously combined with a bent for reading anything on engineering, or mathematics that came his way. He was also fond, like all healthy boys, of tales of adventure and detective stories.

It will be noted how his early associates, surroundings and reading helped to form his outlook on national affairs, and inspire that warm patriotism which was the ruling passion of his life. His milieu was exceptional. At that time Ireland was permeated with national cynicism and pessimism. The failure of the Parnellite movement, and the demoralising effect of the split that followed, had darkened the national outlook, and the adherents of the old faith of Tone and Mitchel and Davis were few and far between. Many had lost heart.

Michael, from his earliest days, was in contact with men and books that filled his mind with thoughts of the struggle for Irish freedom. He formed his political views very early, and soon made up his mind that the attempt to free Ireland from the English yoke by political agitation alone would never get us much further; and the movement led by Mr. Redmond, then the dominant figure in Irish political life, evoked no enthusiasm or favour from him.

One formative influence on his mind in those early schoolboy days was a little weekly paper called The United Irishman, edited in Dublin by one Arthur Griffith, a name then little known. Copies of this paper occasionally found their way to Clonakilty, and in the doctrine of that courageous journal he found a note that rang true to him. Like many another of the younger generation he owed much of his early education in national politics to Arthur Griffith. Among his papers, treasured up from childhood, I find a number of copies of the United Irishman for the year 1902 (when he was only twelve years of age), with passages from Griffith’s editorials marked in them. He also read with avidity The Leader, edited then as now by Mr. D. P. Moran, which preached the doctrines of the Irish Language Movement, and the Irish Industrial Revival.

One result of Michael’s reading was that at an unusually early age he conceived rather strong views on the subject of the Irish clergy, views which his experience in later life caused him to modify and finally abandon altogether. He noted that the priests as a body, with a few honourable exceptions, had been bitter opponents of the ‘48 and Fenian movements, and in his own time that all their influence was thrown into the scale against any form of physical force or insurrectionary movement in Ireland. With boyish intolerance he came to regard them as a force for evil in national politics, and did not hesitate to express that, opinion to all and sundry—even to the kind old priest for whom, for several years, he served Mass. This anti-clerical phase reached its climax in his first years in London, when he startled an Irish literary society by a paper denouncing the Irish clergy in an unmerciful fashion. It is amusing, in the light of this boyish production, to remember how much assistance Michael received from members of the Irish clergy during the fight for freedom, and how many warm friendships with priests and bishops resulted from it.

Physically Michael was exceptionally strong, healthy and full of energy, and escaped most childish ailments. He could wrestle successfully with boys severed years older. He was fond of running, jumping, and the native sport of bowling—a very different thing from the game so denominated in England. He was excessively fond of horses, a fearless rider, and it is told of him that he once got on the back of a three-year-old colt that had never been ridden, and kept on his back till the animal had run himself out. When quite a little lad he used to drive the trap for his mother and sister, who had perfect confidence in him.

That broad, friendly gregarious nature, which was so outstanding a characteristic of his in later years, was already noticeable. He was equally at home with young and old, with ‘boys of his own age, and grey-haired men and women.

Pál beg is situated in a rich and beautiful valley. A small river, whose banks are much overgrown with bushes, runs about 400 yards from the Collins’s home, and here Michael with his sister Katie, and his brother Pat, spent much of their spare time. The boys loved to bathe in the deep holes of the river, and to fish—more or less unsuccessfully—for trout. Strangely enough, though born and bred so near the sea, Michael never learned to swim.

A favourite trip of the children on Sundays was to Roscarbery, and thence, along the cliff-bound coast to Carraig Chlíodhna, the Rock of Clíodhna, called after the queen of the Munster fairies, famed in song and story, an awe-inspiring precipice of wonderful cliffs with foaming breakers beneath. On the top of this cliff the children spent many a pleasant hour, and Michael heard many a wonderful tale of Clíodhna’s enchantments, of wrecks and perils, and drownings and treasure trove. Not far away was Castlefreke, originally Rath Barry, an old castle and demesne which belonged formerly to the Barrys, and later came into the hands of the Frekes. It is now deserted, and the fine extensive grounds are all a wilderness.

Amid such scenes the mind of young Michael ripened until the time when the serious concern of what to do with our boy began to trouble his anxious mother. The boy’s bent was all for engineering and mathematics, his spirit was enterprising and adventurous, but his mother was determined to see him established in the safe and unadventurous future of the Civil Service. Her health began to fail, and she wished to see the future of her youngest secured before anything happened to her. At that time West Cork, and particularly Cairbre, was noted for the number of members it supplied to the British Postal Service—more, it was said, than any other district in Ireland or England. So, very reluctantly, at the age of 13½ years, Michael went to Clonakilty to be prepared for an examination for a Post Office Boy Clerkship.

In Clonakilty he lived with his eldest sister, Mrs. O’Driscoll, whose husband ran a local newspaper. He attended the National School there, and, after passing all the standards, joined the Civil Service Class, conducted by the Principal, Mr. John Crowley, and by Mr. John Blewett. In his spare time he wrote reports of minor football matches and bowling contests for his brother-in-law’s paper, and learned to use the typewriter. When only 15 years of age he