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Fri 14 Aug 09: The 22nd of August is the anniversary of Michael Collins
Michael Collins left on a mission to visit troops in his home county of Cork on the 20th of August 1922. Warned not to go, he told his companion, "They wouldn't shoot me in my own county." As before, the words proved prophetic. Depressed and ill, he set out, some say, to try to end the fighting. At any rate, he visited several anti-Treaty men as well as inspecting various barracks. On the last day of his life, 22 August 1922, he set out from Cork in a convoy that passed through Bandon, Clonakilty, and Rosscarbery on its way to Skibbereen. He stopped at Woodfield, and there in the Four Alls, the pub situated across the road from the house where his mother had been born, he stood his family and escort to the local brew--Clonakilty Wrastler. On the return trip they again passed through Bandon. Michael Collins had only twenty minutes more to live. Around eight o'clock, his convoy was ambushed at a place known as Beal na mBlath--the mouth of flowers. Only one man was killed--Michael Collins.
Funeral of Michael Collins in Glasnevin Cemetery
Thousands of people went to Collins’ lying in state, including British soldiers. Joe O’Reilly, the loyal friend of Michael’s, fell into irrepressible crying when he saw the body. Painter Sir John Lavery was having difficulty fighting back his own tears while painting Love of Ireland. He reported that several mourners wept and one woman even kissed Collins' dead lips. The funeral cortege was three miles long and many people lined the streets to pay homage. The only flower allowed on Michael’s coffin was a white lily from Kitty Kiernan.
Tom Barry, friend and comrade to Collins, noted what happened after the news reached him.
"I was talking with some other prisoners on the night of August 22nd, 1922, when the news came in that Michael Collins had been shot dead in West Cork. There was a heavy silence throughout the jail, and ten minutes later from the corridor outside the top tier of cells I looked down on the extraordinary spectacle of about a thousand kneeling Republican prisoners spontaneously reciting the Rosary aloud for the repose of the soul of the dead Michael Collins, President of the Free State Executive Council and Commander-in-Chief of the Free State Forces."
To place a flower on the grave of Michael Collins for his anniversary
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