Page 121 - GAHS Journal Volume 9

GREYSTONES ARCHAEOLOGICAL & HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL VOLUME 9

died. The cause of death was never ascertained – could the two
days’ roistering have had anything to do with it? – but Tojo was
treated in death with all the respect due to a visiting celebrity. His
body was laid out in the hotel for public viewing, he was buried
in the hotel grounds, and is now commemorated by a plaque and
a statue nearby.

All this was very affecting, but
it was now time to return to
‘proper’ history. Our next stop
was Woodfield, and the ruins of
the cottage where Michael
Collins was born in 1890 as the
youngest of eight children of
Marianna and Michael John
Collins, and the adjoining
remains of the larger house
subsequently occupied by the
family, burned by Crown forces
in 1921. Tranquil and silent,
shaded by trees which must
have grown up in the intervening
century, but bordered by the fields, hills and homesteads which
were at the heart of Michael Collins’s personal geography, this
site above all was a reminder of the elements which made and
drove him.

On then via Sam’s Cross, another Collins landmark, to Beal
na mBlath, where the undistinguished stone cross with its few
wilting floral tributes might have come as an anti-climax without
Tim’s vivid account of the ambush itself. His earlier description
of the events of 22 August 1922 came alive as he pointed out
the site of the ambush, the bends in the road, the boreen along
which the attackers escaped and the farmhouse from which the

117