I made you wait seven minutes, you made us wait seven hundred years. Michael Collins (1890-1922): beloved son, devoted Irishman, postal clerk, champion of the Easter Rising of 1916, spy for the Irish Brotherhood, and creator of the guerilla tactics, was the sole influential mediator at the turn of the century when adversity between Ireland and Britain was its peak. In the tenth century, foreign conquerors penetrated the rocky shores of Ireland and for over seven centuries Ireland was under the British yoke of oppression. During the 1790's, under Theobald Wolfe Tone, Irish citizens intensified in their fight for freedom. The theory of Tone was Irish nationalism, though it has many prominent Protestant supporters, has in modern times been a nationalism which expresses the aspirations of the Catholic people of Ireland. As Ireland entered into the twentieth century, the agitation had reached new heights and new leaders came forth, bringing with them their ideas for freedom. Daniel O'Connell focused on Catholic political rights, Charles Stuart Parnell took up the cause for peasantry and Irish independence, Michael Collins led a wave of terrorist attacks as part of the Irish Republican Army strategy, and Eamon De Valera became the prominent political leader of Sinn Fein and the first president of the independent Irish Republic.
             Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.18 Danish and Norwegian invaders penetrated the shores of Ireland in the tenth century. The first of thousands of long, beautifully curving, high-powered open boats filled with fierce and terrible strange warriors from beyond the sea beached on Lambay Island off the Dublin coast. The came slaughtering, burning and ransacking their way into Irish history, terrorizing and looting Gaelic homestead and monastery alike.2
             Brian Boru, king of the Dal Cais, drove them out, but the Normans invaded in 1170 and for over seven hundred years...