Michael Collins's resting place is the most visited in a cemetery where many great historical figures are buried, writes Patsy McGarry
Shane Mac Thomáis has it solved. Just four things are necessary to ensure lasting fame, he said. "You must be young, good-looking, intelligent and dead." To underline the insight he referred to those great icons of our times - JFK, Che, Kurt Cobain.
He was our guide on a tour of Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery and standing at the grave of Michael Collins. With a simple Celtic cross, it was covered in carefully ordered bunches of flowers, leaving no room to spare.
"Where did all the flowers come from?" asked one of the tour party. To which the reply from Shane was a world-weary "Where do you think - women!" Michael Collins was an "ideal boyfriend", he offered.
Collins's was the most visited grave in Glasnevin and was "always like this", he said, gesturing to the flowers. Some women visited every week. Some even left notes. And then there were the Valentine's cards. It was like that even before the film Michael Collins came out, he said.
Since then he has also had people asking him: "Where is Julia Roberts buried?" - meaning Kitty Kiernan.
Collins's fiancee died in 1945 and is buried near his grave. Others buried in the vicinity include former Fine Gael minister for justice and defence general Seán MacEoin, and general Eoin O'Duffy, founder of the Fine Gael party.
"It's mainly Fine Gael around here," Shane said, with a sweep of his arm, "and Fianna Fáil is over there", as he gestured into the cemetery. "And Labour?" asked one of the tour party. "The crematorium!" he replied.
Over in the Fianna Fáil section, Éamon de Valera's grave is an altogether discreet affair - just pebbles and a small headstone for his wife Sinéad and their children. Also for the father of Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív, the late president's grandson.
"Taoiseach seven times, president twice, founder of Fianna Fáil - it's a very simple, modest grave," said Shane. "Is it true Dev and the wife didn't get on?" asked one of the tour party. "It was said they didn't talk a lot later on," replied Shane. "Did he shoot Michael Collins," asked another. "Come on . . ." said Shane ushering us to Jim Larkin's grave.
"He died in 1947 and they found a pound in his pocket," he said of Big Jim, and someone said you wouldn't find too many trade union leaders you could say that about these days.
"My favourite grave in Glasnevin," Shane told us then, pointing to the name on a headstone which no one recognised.
"Elizabeth O'Farrell was 17 in 1916 and looked after James Connolly in the GPO when he was shot. She was the one who went to the British with a white flag and said they wanted to talk peace and she delivered the surrender note from Pearse and Connolly around the city. You'll not see her name in any of the great books about 1916. And why? Because she's a woman. If she was a man they'd have called a railway station after her."
A midwife and nurse in Holles Street hospital, she dropped dead many years later on Bray promenade. "God love her," said a sympathetic member of the tour party, moved by Shane's sense of grievance.
There was no light to speak of down in the O'Connell vault as the December evening set in. One of the tour party said that, from the inside, its entrance was like that at Newgrange with its sharply defined shaft of light. The round tower above rises 168 feet and took eight years to build before completion in 1869.
"Originally there was a staircase to the top where there was a lookout, like Rapunzel," said Shane. But in 1970 a bomb demolished the staircase, leaving the tower itself unscathed but sending debris crashing through the roof of the crematorium chapel nearby. The scars are still visible on its slates.
O'Connell, who died in 1847, had been buried in another part of Glasnevin but was moved to the vault in 1869. "He left his body to Ireland, his heart to Rome and his soul to God. And his heart was in the Irish College in Rome until it was stolen in 1905," said Shane.
The O'Connell vault also contains the coffins of 10 descendants whose well-preserved coffins are stacked on top of one another. Space is running out.
The most recent O'Connell to be interred there was "a great- great-grandson who died in 1970. He was a parish priest in Kerry and we are hoping there are no children," said Shane.
Then there was Kevin Barry, Maud Gonne, O'Donovan Rossa, the Republican plot, the graves of men who died in the first and second World Wars, Roger Casement, Parnell, The O'Rahilly, Bertie Ahern's parents. We could be there still.
And poor 11-year-old Michael Casey of Francis Street, who died of consumption on February 22nd, 1832, and became the very first person of the 1.5 million to be buried in Glasnevin. His weathered headstone is one of 220,000 in the cemetery's 120 acres. It is beside a yew tree planted to keep cattle out, as yew leaves are poisonous to animals.
Tours of Glasnevin Cemetery are free and take place at 2.30pm on Wednesdays and Fridays.