Boxing Clever: Love triangle territory with Michael Collins, Kitty Kiernan and Harry Boland

Scéalta Grá na hÉireann premiered with Ireland’s greatest and most tragic love story, the love triangle between Michael Collins, Kitty Kiernan and Collins’ best friend Harry Boland. Colourised image: Matt Loughrey/ My Colourful Past

I always thought the Michael Collins-Kitty Kiernan-Harry Boland thing in the Michael Collins movie was the work of an underpaid writer in a Hollywood studio who felt the producers would fire him if he didn’t make up a love triangle. Not true. 

The first episode of the six parter Scéalta Grá na hÉireann (TG4, Wednesday, 8:30pm  and TG4 Player ) is barely four minutes old and we’r e into love triangle territory. Boland and Collins knew her from their visits to the Kiernan family hotel, The Greville Arms, in Longford. 

Following a ceasefire in the War of Independence in 1921, Boland went to the US seeking recognition for the new Irish republic, and Collins went to London to annoy Winston Churchill. 

This is when things got sneaky. 

Kitty Kiernan. Colourised image: Matt Loughrey/ My Colourful Past

Boland wrote a letter to Kiernan basically offering the American package — marry me and we’ll live in America. Now I can remember the way people adored the US in 1970s Ireland (my mother was always talking about American towels.) So I presume this was good card for Boland to play back in the early 20s . Boland’s mother even sent a letter to Kitty congratulating her on the engagement to her son, and signed it ‘your future mother-in-law'. Jesus, the pressure.

There was only one problem. Kitty fancied Collins. And he fancied her. Bye-bye Boland. Collins apparently kept his pledge to write to her every day, which can’t have been easy. 

At least now people in a long-distance relationship can pretend to communicate by sharing videos of a monkey playing the violin — back then he actually had to come up with new material once a day. He must have felt like Mario Rosenstock on Gift Grub.

She didn’t write back to him every day which must have kept him on his toes. Mind you, she didn’t write to Harry Boland at all, which prompted a curt postcard from America, followed by a gracious enough acceptance when he realised that his race was run. Their story is told here via an archive of 300 letters between Kiernan and Collins, preserved at the museum in Cork. And we know how that story ends.

The letters are lovely, frank, and vulnerable, a reminder that they were just two young people trying to nurture a relationship in very weird times. It’s an incredible story — someone should make a movie about it.

In other news, the kids are at home all day and you’re losing your mind. Our two have started watching Villager News by Element Animation, on YouTube. It’s a kind of cross between The Simpsons and the video game, Minecraft. And forget about the kids, I’m hooked myself. It’s bite sized mini-dramas that work for eejits of all ages.

There is one about a guy making toast who is arrested by heavy-handed police who thought he was taking hostages, that had me giggling like my six-year-old. It’s fresh and surprising and there is no mention of Covid-19. So if you want to get the whole family back in front of the screen, you could do worse than trying 15 minutes of this tonight.