The ballad of Michael Collins. The 'big fella' born Clonakilty, County Cork, Ireland. Commander-in-chief of the Easter Rising Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil war. Born in Sam's Cross, West Cork, Ireland, Collins was the third son and youngest of eight children. Most biographies state his date of birth as 16 October 1890; however, his tombstone lists his date of birth as 12 October 1890. His father, also called Michael, had become a member of the republican Fenian movement, but had left and settled down to farming. The elder Collins was 60 years old when he married Marianne O'Brien, then 23, in 1875. The marriage was apparently happy and they raised eight children on their 90-acre farm, Woodfield. Michael was the youngest child; he was only six years old when his father died. On his death bed his father (who was the seventh son of a seventh son) predicted that Michael's sister Helena would go on to become a nun (which she did).[1] He then turned to the family and told them to take care of Michael, because "One day he'll be a great man. He'll do great work for Ireland".[2]

Collins was a bright and precocious child, with a fiery temper and a passionate feeling of nationalism. This was spurred on by a local blacksmith, James Santry, and later, at the Lisavaird National School by a local school headmaster, Denis Lyons, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).

After leaving school, the 15-year-old Collins followed in the footsteps of many people from Ireland, especially of the Clonakilty area, and moved to London. While there he lived with his elder sister, and studied at King's College London. After taking the British Civil Service examination in February 1906,[3] he was employed by the Post Office from July 1906. In 1910, he moved to London where he became a messenger at a London firm, Horne and Company.[3] In 1915, he moved to the Guaranty Trust Company of New York where he remained until his return to Ireland the following year.[4]

He joined the London GAA and, through this, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret, oath-bound society dedicated to achieving Irish independence. Sam Maguire, a Church of Ireland republican from Dunmanway, County Cork, introduced the 19-year-old Collins into the IRB.
Michael Collins first became known during the Easter Rising in 1916. A skilled organiser of considerable intelligence, he was highly respected in the IRB, so much so that he was made financial advisor to Count Plunkett, father of one of the Rising's organisers, Joseph Mary Plunkett, whose aide-de-camp Collins later became.

When the Rising itself took place on Easter Monday, 1916, he fought alongside Patrick Pearse and others in the General Post Office in Dublin. The Rising became (as expected by many) a military disaster. While some celebrated the fact that a rising had happened at all, believing in Pearse's theory of "blood sacrifice" (namely that the deaths of the Rising's leaders would inspire others), Collins railed against it, notably the seizure of indefensible and very vulnerable positions such as St Stephen's Green that were impossible to escape from and difficult to supply. (During the War of Independence he ensured the avoidance of such sitting targets, with his soldiers operating as "flying columns" who waged a guerrilla war against the British, suddenly attacking then just as quickly withdrawing, minimising losses and maximising effectiveness.)

Collins, like many of the other participants, was arrested, almost executed[5] and wound up at Frongoch internment camp. By the time of the general release, Collins had already become one of the leading figures in the post-rising Sinn Féin, a small nationalist party which the British government and the Irish media wrongly blamed for the Rising. It was quickly infiltrated by survivors of the Rising, so as to capitalise on the "notoriety" the movement had gained through British attacks. By October 1917, Collins had risen to become a member of the executive of Sinn Féin and director of organisation of the Irish Volunteers; Éamon de Valera was president of both organisations.

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