Something for the weekend. Michael Collins. A song in tribute to Michael Collins, the father of Irish independence, whose life and death symbolized the glory and tragedy of Ireland.
Collins was the most talented Irish statesman and soldier of the last century. He was also a man of exceptional courage as he demonstrated when he signed the Anglo-Irish treaty, realizing that this was the best deal that could be gotten from the British. “I have signed my own death warrant” was his prophetic utterance when he signed the treaty. Collins was killed in the subsequent utterly futile Irish civil war that erupted, dying at 31 on August 22, 1922, proving once again that the worst enemy of the Irish often tend to be the Irish.
In the negotiations with the British Michael Collins and Winston Churchill became acquainted and found, probably to their mutual surprise, that they respected each other.
Just before his death Collins sent this message, “Tell Winston we could never have done it without him.”
In 1929 Churchill wrote of Collins, “Successor to a sinister inheritance, reared among fierce conditions and moving through ferocious times, he supplied those qualities of action and personality without which the foundation of Irish nationhood would not have been re-established.”
Come listen all me true men to my simple rhyme
For it tells of a young man cut off in his prime
A soldier and a statesman who laid down the law, and,
To die by the roaside in lone Beal na Bla
When barely sixteen to England crossed o’er
For to work as a boy in a government store B
ut the Volunteers call he could not disobey
So he came back to Dublin to join in the fray
-Chorus-
At Easter nineteen sixteen when
Pearse called them out
The men from the Dublin battalion roved out
And in the post office they nobley did show
How a handful of heros could outfight the foe.
To Stafford and jails transported they were
As prisoners of England they soon made a stir
Released before Christmas and home once again
He banded old comrades together to train
Dail Eireann assembled our rights to proclaim
Suppressed by the English you’d think it’s a shame
How Ireland’s best and bravest were harried and torn
From the Arms of their loved ones and children new born.
For years Mick eluded their soldiers and spies
For he was the master of clever disguise
With the Custom House blazing she found t’was no use
And soon Mother England had asked for a truce
Oh when will the young men a sad lesson spurn
That brother and brother they never should turn
Alas that a split in our ranks ‘ere we saw
Mick Collins stretched lifeless in lone Beal na Bla
Oh long will old Ireland be seeking in vain
Ere we find a new leader to match the man slain
A true son of Grainne his name long will shine
O gallant Mick Collins cut off in his prime.
There are many who boycott products made in England to this day.
My family-the Spooners were driven out of their homes by the English .They were slightly better than Nazis.I’ll forgive but NEVER forget.Bloody Orangemen,as my Mother and her sisters used to say-they meant ALL English..
Showing once again that if one wants something done right, one must do it oneself.
A true hero! God bless him! Rest in peace, Miceál!
Gorden, just remember that not ALL English are bad, some of them are even Catholics
Then let them leave Northern Ireland and resettle those Scots that they imported just like the USSR did with Crimea.
The English are ALL complicit until an apology is proferred.They were imperialists just like the Nazis.Catholicism has NOTHING to do with it -look at Croation war crimes.
According to the English historian Sir William Petty, before the war there was an estimated 1.5 million Gaelic Irish. After the war there was an estimated .5 million.
We know that through the Irish slave trade Cromwell sold about 60,000 Irish into slavery in Barbados and Virginia, so the balance would have been either killed in battle or through the starvation and later diseases that set in because of the forced migration of the Irish into Connaught.
Most modern authors consider this an early form of ethnic cleansing. To this day there are anti-Catholic laws on the books in the U.K. and there Cromwell is looked upon as a hero for betraying and murdering his Catholic King.
“The English are ALL complicit until an apology is proferred.”
Oh give it a break. There are virtually no English alive from the time when they controlled all of Ireland. An apology now would be empty and meaningless. The English, for all the misdeeds of some English in Ireland, were never Nazis, but your proposal to have the English remove Northern Irish, most of whom have families that have lived in Ireland since the seventeenth century, would be a Nazi like act. I have a deep love of history, but being consumed with hate because of it is a poor way to go through life and is completely antithetical to the Gospel.