General Collins' Funeral — by an eye witness

Galway Observer, 2nd September, 1922

The following is a private letter in which the writer gives her experiences at the funeral of General Collins.

Just thought I would write to tell you of our fine view of the procession. We all left here (Terenure) on Sunday evening before six o'clock to see the removal of the body from the City Hall. We had a splendid view from the windows of Dick's office in Dame St. There was no one allowed to pass Dame St. to City Hall, only all Dail Members, Press representatives, the clergy and other prominent men, so I needn't tell you we had a great job to get to the office; we were ordered back at every corner. At last Dick asked the D.I. to let us pass, that we had only a few doors up to go, that we wanted to get on the windows, so we were escorted up by two policemen the whole way right up to the City Hall which was guarded by military and police. We thought we had plenty of time to get there, but we were stunned at the crowd.

The whole procession was getting ready from outside the office, all the Dail members and clergy were only a few yards up from us.

Mr Padraic O'Maillie appeared to be a most prominent man among them, every member that turned up had a shake hands for him.

It was a wonderful site to see the hundreds of soldiers and officers getting into order. At each corner there was a band and different bodies joining in as the procession proceeded on to the Cathedral. We waited for two hours before it started. The coffin did not come out till eight o clock. The coffin was on a machine—gun carriage drawn by six beautiful black horses. A strange thing about it is, just outside the office we were in, they could not get the horses to draw it for about ten minutes ; the road tracks were too slippery, there were flashes of lightening coming from the horses feet. When the procession passed, all the people scattered. Well, to see them from the windows, they were like a mass of flies to look down at all the heads moving, and I believe the sights of people at the other end of the city was nothing compared to the sights I saw. It took us a full hour to get through the crowd, as to try and get a tram it was impossible. We had to walk it to Portobello Barracks ; even then we couldn't get a tram for a full half hour, people were packed in the tram like sardines ; it was 11 o'clock before we got home.

On Monday Mrs Smith and myself got out at ten o'clock to catch the tram, so that we could find a good post to stand for the day. We wanted to get to the nearest place from home, so we got off at Stephen's Green and stayed there. We were an hour too early, we got a good stand opposite Stephens Green outside the Ladies Club. We were standing on three high steps and had a splendid view from beginning to end. It was half past two by the time it got round our way, and near four o'clock before we saw the end of it. Well, I thought it would never end, we got sunburned from standing in the sun so long. It was a beautiful day. There's no need for me to explain any more abut it, the daily papers tell the rest. The best sight of all was the lorry loads of wreaths. I counted 14 lorrys laden with wreaths, not to talking of all the wreaths that were in private motor cars, and the different bodies that carried their own. The wreaths were made into every imaginable shape — crosses, rings, harps and the Celtic cross. The nicest one of all was the one made into a big monument which took a separate car to carry. Dick had to be out at nine o'clock in the morning and was very busy engaging the different positions to take pictures of the processions for his firm. There were Cinema representatives from all parts of England all making a fight to have the first picture. Dick had a great laugh at some of them, because they didn't know a blessed thing about Dublin or didn't know what position to take. The representatives from Dick's firm were the best off, they all depended on him to show them where to go. General Collins' procession is going to be shown all over the world.

Dick was in Glasnevin at the burial and said it would draw a tear from a stone to see all the officers crying over the grave. When Mr Mulcahy was giving a short speech over the grave he broke down several times. There was a sniper on a tree some distance away, and fired about twenty shots while Mr Mulcahy was speaking, but there was no notice taken of it. Mrs Smith and I heard a shot when the procession was passing. The London fellows told Dick they never witnessed the like of the procession. The King's Coronation was nothing to it, Collins's was the largest procession they ever saw.

A strange occurrence happened at Griffith's funeral. At Beresford Place, the flag flew clean off the coffin. The procession was at a standstill for a few minutes. There wasn't a puff of wind to flow it off; people were surprised.

In some of the back streets of Dublin the women were dancing jigs and reels, and rejoicing over Griffith and Collins being buried. The Irregulars consider this a great victory to have Collins shot down. It is rumoured here since Griffith's death, that he got slow poison, and that his remains were going to be taken up.

There were three men shot dead who was caught in the City Hall with bombs in their pockets and revolvers. They were just caught in time and arrested and shot that night unknown to anyone.

It is rumoured here that De Valera has left the country and is in Birmingham.
R.A.S.