Do de moonwalk!
From the Capuchin archives:
Photographic print of Michael Collins at St. Enda’s School, Rathfarnham, Dublin, addressing a meeting to promote the National Loan in 1920. St. Enda’s or Scoil Éanna, was a secondary school established by Pádraig Pearse in 1908. The print forms part of a collection of photographs intended for publication in the 1966 edition of ‘The Capuchin Annual’, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising.
In Broadstone, Dublin.
Images taken on August 8, 1995, during filming for Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins (1996) featuring Jordan, Liam Neeson, Julia Roberts Alan Rickman, Aidan Quinn and an extremely sunburnt props guy.
Needs more wide-brimmed hats.
(Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland)
To awaken you is just a kiss away
And in my arms to rock and sway
In all sincerity I want to say
Be my Valentine for just one day
Whenever you need me in gloom and cheer
You can rest assured I’ll always be near
With this line to be my second best
My love for you in a die to be caste.
Michael Collins’ Valentine poem (to his first girlfriend, Susan Killeen, 1916)
I need a kiss, urgently. I want to press my wife to my heart, but we are 150 miles apart. Darling, do you think of me at all? Can you sleep without those long limbs wrapped round you? Those same limbs are longing to be wrapped round you again – two weeks – fourteen days – how can I endure it? You do not know how sorrowful I am.
Eamon de Valera to Sinead, from Irish college, 1911
Cheeky, ruddy-faced rhyme from wholesome patriot.
Or spindly, lust-crippled doggerel from impatient gaelgoir.
YOU decide.
Thanks Sibling of Daedalus
It got a bit hairy betimes.
From Tim Pat Coogan’s The Man Who Made Ireland:
Fascinating insight.
Or hoary old chestnut roasting on an open fire.
YOU decide.
The Man Who Made Ireland by Tim Pat Coogan (Amazon)
Pic via GeneralMichaelCollins
Thanks Sibling Of Daedalus
Irish history could have been very different if things had gone differently that day (22 August 1922) twitter.com/ireland/status…
— Ireland / Lane (@ireland) September 19, 2012
Jay.
Sus.
He went to Tayto Park and Oliver Plunkett’s head.
Did Michael Collins Bring Lenin To Ireland?
From Enda Kenny’s address at Beal na mBlath, Co Cork, on Sunday:
Here at Beal na mBlath we are indeed on sacred ground. The brave, impulsive decision…. “Stop! and we’ll fight them”…. ended Michael Collin’s life but not his power over our history, our national heart, our imagination.
Today, we honour his civilian legacy.
The brilliant Minister for Finance. The outstanding organiser who brought Lenin himself to Ireland to see how the National Loan worked.
Really?
REALLY?
Anyone?
Lenin Brought To ireland By Michael Collins (CedarLoungeRevolution)
Enda Kenny’s speech: Michael Collins’ 90th Anniversary (MerrionStreet.ie)
Sliabh na mBan: Michael Collins’ armoured ‘jam jar’ at Béal na mBláth, Co Cork, yesterday on the 90th anniversary of the Corkman’s death.
Enda Kenny told the gathering
“I think it is safe to say that the giant discrepancies that have occurred in recent years would leave Collins, like all of us, absolutely speechless But helpless? Never — he was a pragmatist, a doer, a passionate lover of Ireland and an unfailing optimist.”
Hmm.
Watch the restoration of Sliabh na mBan in timelapse here.
(Thanks Moss)
Central Bank of Ireland-Issue 50 and 10 Euro Michael Collins Commemorative Coins.
The annual Michael Collins Commemoration will come in for particular attention this year because it is the 90th anniversary, and the Taoiseach will be the orator. Is it too much to hope that the media and the participants will use the correct name-form of the place where Collins met his tragic end? The proper usage is Béal na Blá, not “mBláth”. The latter, media-invented distortion is misplaced pedantry with its phony, pseudo-poetic association with “flowers”.Up to quite recently, the universal pronunciation in the locality itself and in the wider region was always Béal na Blá.
‘Where Collins Met His Final End (John A Murphy, Irish Times Letters)
(Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland)
Was it for this?
Twas.
Timmy Falvey writes:
These guys I know from college in Ireland are on a J1 in New York and carry around a 6ft cardboard cut-out of Michael Collins. Its going down fairly well. They’re also on Twitter @micksadventures.
