"From his earliest days Michael seems to have wanted to be the leader in everything that went on around him. His cousin Michael O'Brien wrote of him in their childhood days that Collins would always 'insist on running the show at Woodfield when we were kids, even to holding the pike (fork) when we endeavoured to spear salmon'. (There were only small trout in the river.) The family history abounds with doting anecdotes of the young Collins. Celestine, going away to be a nun in England, recalls the little boy waving goodbye until the pony and trap took her around the bend and out of sight. Mary tells of being left to look after the household for a day of drudgery during which she forgot to dig the potatoes until evening. Wearily forcing herself to the kitchen garden she was met by her three-year-old brother dragging behind him a bucket of potatoes that he had somehow managed to dig up by himself. Johnny remembers his prowess with horses, in particular, being found one day while still a baby curled up fast asleep in a stable between the hoofs of a notoriously vicious animal. His father on his deathbed told his grieving family to mind Michael because, 'One day he'll be a great man. He'll do great work for Ireland.' Michael was six years old at the time."