Free Michael Collins and the Women Who Spied For Ireland by Meda Ryan Page B

their way to contact other family members and did not spare themselves in locating photos: Michael Collins, Iosold Ó Deirg, Dorothy Heffernan, Máire Molloy, Ned O’Sullivan, Michael Collins-Powell, Helen Litton, Eily Hales-MacCarthy, Maura Murphy, Sylvester Barrett, Declan Heffernan, Ann Barrett, Josie Barrett-Leahy.
    A sincere thank you is due to Jo O’Donoghue, editor of Marino Books/Mercier Press, who worked with me unstintingly through the final drafts of the manuscript, and also to Anne O’Donnell and Siobhán Cullen.
    Thanks is also due to the many who could not help directly but who took the trouble to write or telephone me with snippets of information. A special word of gratitude is due to the members of my family and to my many relatives and friends for their patience throughout my years of research and writing.
    The assistance of all has been gratefully appreciated and I regret if I have inadvertently omitted to mention any name.

From Woodfield to London
    Michael Collins was born on 16 October 1890 in the family’s stone farmhouse at Woodfield outside Clonakilty.
    He was the eighth child and third son of Michael (Mike) John Collins and Mary Anne (Marianne) O’Brien. According to the memoirs of two of the Collins sisters, Mary and Helena, the night prior to the birth Marianne, always energetic and resourceful, had milked the cows and strained the fresh milk. The baby, christened Michael Patrick a few days later, in Rosscarbery Church, had a father who was seventy-five years old, but ‘age did not make him old’. His father had married in 1875 when Marianne was only twenty-three and he a few months short of his sixtieth birthday.
    Despite the big difference in age, their children remembered the marriage as a happy one. Since her early teens Marianne O’Brien had been used to responsibility and hard work and in this respect was to become an important role model for her cherished youngest son. She had to assist in the rearing of her many brothers and sisters because her father was killed and her mother injured when their horse shied as they returned from a funeral. And when she married Michael John Collins and came to Woodfield she had to care for his three brothers during her early years there. Her eight children were born in close succession, but she accepted her responsibilities as ‘God’s will’.
    Michael, being the youngest of eight children, had a special place in family life. Although he was into mischief and adventure from an early age, his sister, Mary notes:

    To say that we loved this baby would be an understatement – we simply adored him. Old Uncle Paddy said as soon as he saw him, ‘Be careful of this child for he will be a great and mighty man when we are all forgotten.’ 1

    During the long winter evenings Michael would listen as neighbours gathered to tell stories around the turf fire of the Woodfield kitchen. The women, who often included his mother’s mother, Granny O’Brien, would sew, knit or crochet. Embedded in Granny O’Brien’s memory was an incident from the potato famine of 1848. While returning from Clonakilty she saw people on the roadside who had starved to death. They had been too weak to reach the Clonakilty workhouse.
    Michael’s father would recall hardships in his household during that period, when his own mother often did not have enough food for even a meagre meal to her family. Though the economy had improved by the 1890s, shortages still prevailed and conditions were ‘primitive’ at Woodfield. Despite disadvantages the Collinses were happy, according to Michael’s sister, Helena. The farm was self-supporting. Grain grown on their farm was ground, made into flour and used by Mama for baking. Therefore, even young Michael’s contribution was accepted with praise when he helped his sisters to pick blackberries for jam, took a turn at churning the cream into butter or lent his mother a