"When they killed Mick. . . "

            I am first generation Irish. My father was born in Northern Ireland, County Armagh, in Crossmaglen, “where there are more rogues than honest men.”  My mother was born in the South, in the Republic, Gort, County Galway, adjacent to Coole Park, the demesne of Lady Gregory. My parents were emigrants. Growing up, I heard mention of figures such as Yeats and Lady Gregory in a rudimentary literary context.  They were the big house folk who started the Abbey Theater.  A family keepsake that hangs in my home is a picture of a 1904 performance of Lady Gregory's "Spreading the News."  A handbill announcing my grandfather's public auction of meadowland is affixed to the wall of the stage set.  Whether this is hem of the garment stuff or an accidental souvenir I really don't know.  I do know that I have always remembered my father's terse hand-washing explanation of his disenchantment with Irish nationalism: "When they killed Mick Collins, I was done with the lot of 'em."  That statement intrigued me as a boy although I did not understand it. Now that I know something of the history and the principals, I can appreciate the social and political conditions in Irish culture that created the need to both valorize and revile heroes, specifically Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell.

Within a span of forty-five years an emergent Irish nation saw the rise and fall of two compelling public figures, Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) and Michael Collins (1890-1922).  Parnell's career as parlimentary "obstructionist" leader on issues of land reform and home rule impacted the imagination of James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist and "Ivy Day in the Committee Room."  Yeats also drew upon the promise of the "uncrowned king," most fully in "Parnell's Funeral."  The response to Michael Collins has been different.  Even though the actual accomplishments of Collins as Director of Intelligence during the Anglo-Irish War and Commander-in-Chief of the Free State forces during the Civil War would be seen by many as surpassing Parnell, it is a puzzle that no major Irish writer was sparked to shape a lasting literary response by Collins's career.  Nonetheless Collins's reputation among “common people” is strong, and is sustained in popular fiction, verse, story and song.  The successful feature film, “Michael Collins,” directed by Neil Jordan, is a case in point.

            Why then did Parnell, whose effect on the Irish social order constituted only potential and promise, stir more formal literary response from Ireland's writers than Collins, whose impact is still felt today in the republic birthed by the treaty he shaped and signed?

            The literary and popular responses to Parnell and Collins may serve as benchmark representations of the Irish hero.  Why do we idolize and why do we revile?  Do public figures become iconic through the influence of literary response?  Are literary responses themselves determined by political allegiance?  These general questions are germane to most literary inquiry.  But they seem to have a particular cogency in Modern Irish Literature.