INAUGURAL CELEBRATIONS in west Cork this weekend to mark the birthday of Michael Collins will include bus tours and a birthday bash for “The Big Fella”.
Commemorations already take place each August at Béal na Blá, the scene of the Irish revolutionary leader’s ambush and death. However, organisers say events to be held this weekend in Clonakilty will be the first official celebration of his birthday, and will have a different tone. White doves were released in Clonakilty yesterday. Collins was born at Woodfield, Sam’s Cross, in west Cork, on October 16th, 1890.
Highlights of the birthday celebrations will include a GAA match with local teams decked out in long shorts and peaked caps, reminiscent of matches in Collins’s day.
Local schoolchildren’s art and letters inspired by Collins’s story will be displayed in the parish centre, Clonakilty, where Collins himself attended classes some 110 years ago. The idea for the celebrations arose when local man Michael O’Neill saw a tweet last year. It said it was Collins’s 121st birthday.
“I thought something should happen to mark the occasion because he’s an idol for everyone here in Clonakilty,” he said.
A gala ball featuring west Cork produce and the town’s first “Dialogue” event, billed as an opportunity to “witness what’s on other people’s minds without coming to any conclusions or judgments” form part of the line-up.
Closing events will see a public candlelit gathering observe three minutes’ silence in remembrance of Collins.
Collins prophesied his own early death on signing the Treaty in 1921 with the words “I have signed my own death warrant”. He was shot dead in an ambush within a year.