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~ Michael Collins The Early Years~
Michael Collins Boyhood, 1890—1906
'A great host with whom it is not fortunate to contend, the
battle-trooped host of the O'Coileain.'
‘OLD IRISH SAYING’
The Collins in West Cork are decended from the O'Coileain, lords of Ui Conaill Gabhra from time immemorial. Long before William the Conqueror set foot on the sister island, the O'Coileain were famed for their ferocious warrior skills. The Conqueror’s great-grandson, Henry II, received the grant of Ireland from Pope Adrian IV on condition that he brought law and order to the Irish Church and State.
Read Papal Bull of 1155 AD.
The genuineness of the Papal Bull Laudabiliter setting forth this shady deal is open to question; but the Irish, a devout race, swallowed the mandate from His Holiness and meekly submitted. The immediate occasion for the Anglo-Norman invasion, in 1170, was ostensibly the restoration of Dermot McMurrough, King of Leinster, who had been ejected four years previously. When Dermot conveniendy died and was replaced by the Norman magnate FitzGilbert, the Irish rose in revolt under Rory O’Connor, King of Connacht. King Henry himself then crossed over to Ireland on 17 October 1171, a date that would later be engraved on the mind of every Irishman. The conquest of Ireland was sudden and all-embracing; the petty kings were replaced by Norman barons and the rigours of feudalism imposed.
In one of the many uprisings of that fateful decade the O'Coileain were expelled from their lands in County Limerick (the Baronies of Upper and Lower Connelloe which includes Adare, Rathkeale & Newcastlewest.). A small remnant managed to cling on to Claoghlas (Cleanglass Townland near Newcastlewest S.S 52, 53) in the far south-west of the county till the late-eighteenth century when they were dispossessed by the Fitzgeralds. Meanwhile, the main body of the clan migrated southwards, almost as far as they could possibly go, to West Cork, one of the remotest and poorest areas in the far south-west of Ireland.
Not far from Galley Head, the promontory that separates the bays of Clonakilty and Rosscarbery, lies the straggle of cottages and farmhouses at the crossroads known as Sam’s Cross (afrer a notorious highwayman, Sam Wallace). Near this hamlet, nestling in the hills midway between the two market towns, is the tiny farm of Woodfield, ninety acres in extent, which had been rented by the Collins family for generations.
The Four Alls Tavern
At the crossroads itself stands the Four Alls tavern which, for many years, was kept by Jeremiah Collins (and is today run by his grandson, Maurice) and still has its curious signboard inscribed ‘I Rule All, I Fight for All, I Pray for All, but I Pay for All’, captions to pictures of a king, a pikeman a priest and a farmer respectively. In a cottage across the road was born Mary Anne 0’ Brien in 1855. She was scarcely out of her teens when she married one of the Collins brothers who tenanted Woodfield.
Woodfield was not untypical of the farms in this part of Ireland, with its small, stony fields on the long slope of a windswept hillside. Subdivision over the centuries had reduced it by the early-nineteenth century to a few scattered acres providing little more than subsistence farming. It was occupied by four brothers, Maurice, Thomas, Patrick and Michael John Collins. They could not afford to marry, and for years they struggled, four ageing bachelors, to make a go of the farm.
Somehow they weathered the Great Hunger of the 1840s and the upheavals of the Young Ireland rebellion in 1848, and were swept up in the temperance crusade of Father Mathew the following year, unreservedly accepting the supposition that strong drink was a weapon of the English squirearchy to keep the Irish docile.
In 1850 Pat and Tom, now in their fifties, had a brush with a couple of squireens who were trampling through their crops in pursuit of a fox. The Collins brothers were extremely fortunate not to be ejected from their tenancy, but for manhandling the huntsmen and driving them off their fields, Pat and Tom spent a year in Cork Gaol. Once a month Michael mounted his garron and made the fatiguing journey, through Timoleague and Bandon, to the county town twenty miles away to the north-east, bringing pathetic comfort to his gentle elder brothers whose uncharacteristic eruption had cost them so dear.
Future Reading: Robert Emmet
Article Continued Page 2
To enquire about the Collins 22 Society, please contact Bill Martin, National organiser at info@generalmichaelcollins.com. To become a member of the Society please visit our memberships page.
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