Both lover and fighter
QUESTION Michael Collins was notorious for his love affairs but he was also stalked by a woman. Who was she and what did she do? MICHAEL Collins was infamous for his affairs and alleged affairs with women, many of whom were prominent in high society.
At the time he was assassinated, in Co. Cork, on August 22, 1922, just seven months after the Anglo-Irish treaty had been signed, he was officially engaged to Kitty Collins. She hailed from Granard, Co. Longford. Kitty went on to marry Felix Cronin, the Quartermaster General in the Irish Army, in 1925; she died in 1945.
But long before then, he had been involved with many other women, who often helped him in his political and military struggles before the treaty was agreed.
Between 1918 and 1920, Collins’s girlfriend was Madeline ‘Dilly’ Dicker, who acted as a secret agent for Collins. On occasion, dressed as a man, she managed to smuggle herself on to the mail boats that plied between Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) and Holyhead. On the boats, she broke into the wicker baskets that carried the official mail between Dublin Castle and Holyhead, so that correspondence often ended up being read by Collins. She also often hid the gun that Collins carried for his personal protection in her long coat. Dilly was an ardent nationalist, so she was more than happy to undertake many risky tasks for Collins.
Michael Collins was also supposed to have had affairs with a number of women in high society, who were all so besotted with him that they were willing to act as conduits between Collins and the British government during the treaty negotiations. One of those women was Lady Londonderry, while another was Hazel Lavery, the Irish-American wife of Sir John Lavery, the artist.
Another woman with whom Michael Collins allegedly had an affair was Princess Mary of the British royal family, although the truth of this hasn’t been established and it seems a little far-fetched.
The woman accused of stalking Michael Collins had known him for four years before he was killed in 1922. She was Moya Llewelyn–Davies, who had a classic nationalist pedigree; her father had been a Fenian prisoner. Moya was Irish – she was born as Mary O’Connor – but after the rest of her family died from shellfish poisoning, when she was 18, she left for London.
There, she got married and Moya and her husband were so taken by Collins and his activities that they bought a big house, Furry Glen House, at Killester, north Dublin, then largely open country. The marriage didn’t last and it was widely assumed that by 1921, she and Collins were lovers. Some sources say they had a son together, whom they called Richard, but this remains unproven.
While she was also a gun-runner for Collins, using her extravagant clothes and her car as a decoy, she also pestered Collins during the last period of his life. While she had been useful to Collins in the earlier period of their relationship, by the time the treaty negotiations were starting, she had become a serious nuisance to him. She wrote her autobiography, in which she claimed to have ‘spilled the beans’ on her relationship with Collins, but those close to Collins managed to get the planned book stopped.
Moya died in 1943, aged 62, and is buried in an unmarked grave at Deansgrange cemetery in south Co. Dublin.
Apart from this ragged relationship with Mona Llewelyn-Davies, Michael Collins generally got on extremely well with women, and all the women he knew, including those in high society, were willing to help him in his revolutionary work.
Some historians have, however, poured scorn on the notion of Michael Collins as the great revolutionary lover, saying that not only was he true to the Catholic church and its teachings, but that when he was killed in 1922, he was still a virgin. QUESTION What were barn owls
called before there were barns? THE word ‘owl’ originated in early European languages. In old Norse, an owl was ugla and in old German
uwila, both words derived from the owl’s unique call. In Old English (AD600 to 1000), owl was ule and, by the time of Middle English (AD1000 to the 1400s), the word had become owle. ‘Barn’ comes from the Old English
bereaern, a ‘barley house,’ from bere, barley and aern, house. Owls and barns have been around for a long time, but it was only in the 19th century that these birds were routinely called barn owls.
Owls have always been better documented in folklore, legend and historical accounts than most animal species, but also suffered from more ignorance, superstition and, as a consequence, persecution.
The ancient Greeks and Romans believed they were harbingers of evil, a belief that remained for many centuries. Pliny the Elder described the owl as ‘the very monster of the night’ and argued ‘when it appears, it foretells nothing but evil.’
For many centuries it was called the screech owl or shriek owl on account of its drawn-out rasping screech (something like shreeeee), a declaration of territory or sometimes a warning alarm.
Superstitions surrounding the owl have followed down the centuries. In the 7th century, Isidore of Seville, in her Etymologies wrote: ‘The screech owl takes its name from the sound of its voice; it is a deadly bird, burdened with feathers and with a heavy laziness. It lives in caves and wanders in tombs day and night.’ Both Edmund Spenser and Shakespeare (in A Midsummer Night’s Dream) wrote disparagingly about the barn owl.
It was 1769 before the barn owl was first officially described, by Italian naturalist Giovanni Scopoli, as Tytoalba, tyto being Greek for owl and alba Latin for white. The term became widespread only in the 19th century: ‘Nearly allied to the Strix flammea, or barn owl of England’ (Expedition Into Central Australia, by Charles Sturt, 1849) and ‘there are two owls, representing the short-eared and white barn-owls of Europe.’ (A Naturalist’s Voyage Round The World by Charles Darwin 1859).
This bird had many local names, some still in use, including Scritchowle and Gillihowlet (Scotland),
Hoolet (lowland Scotland) and Jenny Owl (Northumberland). Jennifer Jagger, St Davids,
Pembrokeshire.
QUESTION What’s
special about an Atkinson Cycle petrol engine, and why are they so popular in petrol-electric hybrid cars? THE first four-stroke spark-ignition engine was built in 1876 by Nicolaus August Otto, a self-taught German engineer, at the Gasmotoren-Fabrik
Deutz, near Cologne. The four-stroke engine uses four distinct piston strokes (intake, compression, power and exhaust) to complete an operating cycle. The piston makes two complete passes in the cylinder to complete one operating cycle, requiring two revolutions (720 degrees) of the crankshaft.
This cycle has equal compression and expansion ratios in each cylinder. It produces decent power output from any given displacement, but isn’t the most fuel-efficient way of generating power.
In 1882, British engineer James Atkinson developed and patented a modified four-stroke cycle that used a variable length piston stroke and delayed intake valve closing to increase fuel efficiency. Atkinson used slightly different timing for valve opening and closing events. In particular, the intake valve stays open as the compression stroke begins.
Complex mechanical linkages were needed to achieve different stroke lengths from a single revolution of the crankshaft, and these were expensive and difficult to manufacture at the time. More importantly, increased efficiency was offset by a decrease in power.
In 1888 Atkinson took his ‘Cycle’ engine to America and submitted it for trial to the scientific committee of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia. It was so satisfied with the performance that it awarded him the John Scott Legacy Medal, the first time this honour had been awarded outside the country.
However, the cost and power deficiencies meant the engine did not go into production. Only with improved materials and technology did a modified Atkinson become viable in the new breed of hybrid car. These are focused on efficiency, and their back-up electric motors can compensate for the horsepower deficit.
Richard Finn, Gloucester.