Behind the barracks is a military church and surrounding graveyard. It is actually where all the leaders of the 1916 Easter rising are buried. Well, just inside the gates of the churchyard there is a small lodge to your right as you go in the gate. My father and mother used to live there whilst my father was on duty in Collins’s Barracks, he was a soldier you see, I don’t know how it came to be that they got to live in that house but that’s neither here nor there. My Mam told me this story once, that she and my auntie were at home in the lodge one night when they heard sounds from outside in the churchyard, she said it sounded like horses and carriages and she looked out the window but she saw nothing, but after a few times of hearing this she came to the conclusion that it was the sounds of the funeral processions of the 1916 leaders being brought by horse and cars up to the grave where the leaders where buried, because among the sounds where that of horses marching as well as soldiers escorting the coffins, other sounds she remembers are voices shouting marching orders. She said she could very clearly make out the sounds of the very distinctive boots that soldiers would have worn back then, she said she used to listen terrified in case in the early times she heard it that she was mistaken and it was gangs that had gotten access to the church yard, but after hearing it a few times she could very clearly make out that it sounded distinctly like a funeral procession and that all sounds pointed to that except for obviously seeing anything, it was only ever sounds she heard, and it was so loud outside the window that it used to actually wake my sister who was just a baby at the time and have her screaming and crying. This was back in the late 70’s she sad she heard it.
Martin Hogan
