THE BONDS IN CORCAIGH, MUNSTER

The Bonds in Corcaigh

Corcaigh or Cork, means marsh, is a city in Ireland, located in the South-West Region, in the province of Munster. It is the second largest city in the state and the third most populous on the island of Ireland. 

The city is built on the River Lee which splits into two channels at the western end of the city; the city centre is divided by these channels. They reconverge at the eastern end where the quays and docks along the river banks lead outwards towards Lough Mahon and Cork Harbour, one of the world's largest natural harbours.

The city's cognomen of the rebel city originates in its support for the Yorkist cause during the English 15th century Wars of the Roses. Corkonians often refer to the city as the real capital in reference to the city's role as the centre of anti-treaty forces during the Irish Civil War.

More information: Cork

Cork was originally a monastic settlement, reputedly founded by Saint Finbarr in the 6th century. Cork achieved an urban character at some point between 915 and 922 when Norseman (Viking) settlers founded a trading port. It has been proposed that, like Dublin, Cork was an important trading centre in the global Scandinavian trade network. 

The Bonds in the Black Rock Castle Observatory

The ecclesiastical settlement continued alongside the Viking longphort, with the two developing a type of symbiotic relationship; the Norsemen providing otherwise unobtainable trade goods for the monastery, and perhaps also military aid. 

The city's charter was granted by Prince John, as Lord of Ireland, in 1185. It suffered a severe blow in 1349 when almost half the townspeople died of plague when the Black Death arrived in the town. In 1491, Cork played a part in the English Wars of the Roses when Perkin Warbeck a pretender to the English throne, landed in the city and tried to recruit support for a plot to overthrow Henry VII of England. The then mayor of Cork and several important citizens went with Warbeck to England but when the rebellion collapsed they were all captured and executed. The title of Mayor of Cork was established by royal charter in 1318, and the title was changed to Lord Mayor in 1900 following the knighthood of the incumbent Mayor by Queen Victoria on her Royal visit to the city.

Since the nineteenth century, Cork had been a strongly Irish nationalist city, with widespread support for Irish Home Rule and the Irish Parliamentary Party, but from 1910 stood firmly behind William O'Brien's dissident All-for-Ireland Party. O'Brien published a third local newspaper, the Cork Free Press.

In the War of Independence, the centre of Cork was burnt down by the British Black and Tans, and saw fierce fighting between Irish guerrillas and UK forces. During the Irish Civil War, Cork was for a time held by anti-Treaty forces, until it was retaken by the pro-Treaty National Army in an attack from the sea.

More information: Cork Guide

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. 

Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, 

but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, 

a possession for all eternity. 

Oscar Wilde

MÍCHEÁL Ó COILEÁIN: IRISH COURAGE TO FREEDOM

Michael Collins

Mícheál Ó Coileáin (1890-1922) was a soldier and politician who was a leading figure in the struggle for Irish independence in the early 20th century. Collins was an Irish revolutionary leader, politician, Minister for Finance, Director of Information, and Teachta Dála (TD) for Cork South in the First Dáil of 1919, Adjutant General, Director of Intelligence, and Director of Organisation and Arms Procurement for the IRA, President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood from November 1920 until his death, and member of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. 

Subsequently, he was both Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-chief of the National Army. Collins was shot and killed in an ambush in August 1922 during the Irish Civil War.

Born in Woodfield, Sam's Cross, now the Michael Collins Birthplace, near Clonakilty, County Cork, Collins was the third son and youngest of eight children. Most biographies give his date of birth as 16 October 1890, but his tombstone cites 12 October 1890. 

The struggle for Home Rule, along with labour unrest, had led to the formation in 1913 of two major nationalist paramilitary groups who would launch the Easter Rising: the Irish Citizen Army was established by James Connolly and the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), to protect strikers from the Dublin Metropolitan Police during the 1913 Dublin Lockout. 

Michael Collins in a meeting

The Irish Volunteers were created in the same year by the IRB and other nationalists in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers (UVF), an Ulster loyalist body pledged to oppose Home Rule by force. 

Collins became one of the leading figures in the post-Rising independence movement spearheaded by Arthur Griffith, editor and publisher of the main nationalist newspaper The United Irishman, which Collins had read avidly as a boy. 

Like many senior Sinn Féin representatives Collins was elected as an MP, for Cork South, with the right to sit in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in London. Unlike their rivals in the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), Sinn Féin MPs had announced that they would not take their seats in Westminster but instead would set up an Irish Parliament in Dublin. 

On 22 August 1922, during the Irish Civil War, Michael Collins was killed in an ambush here by anti-treaty IRA forces while travelling in convoy from Bandon. The ambush was planned in a farmhouse in Béal na Bláth close to The Diamond Bar.

Brendan Behan wrote the poem The laughing boy lamenting the death of Collins. This poem was translated into Greek in 1961 by Vasilis Rotas. In October of the same year, Mikis Theodorakis composed the song Tο γελαστό παιδί, The laughing boy, using Rotas' translation. The song was recorded by Maria Farantouri in 1966.

More information: BBC

 Early this morning, I signed my death warrant.

Michael Collins