Johnny Collins was born to parents Mick Collins and Biddy Doyle of Co Offaly. All of Johnny’s young life was spent on the roads of Leinster traveling with his family, doing a wide range of jobs as children and as a family -- from picking spuds and sugar beet to footing turf in the German Bog, as it was then known. In the wintertime he helped his parents selling buckets and pans and doing what ever else they could to keep food on the table.
Johnny constantly referred to the good old days -- meaning the positive interaction Travellers and settled people had with each other and to when life was not so complicated.
As a young man Johnny was taught by his father and mother very valuable skills for making a living and survival. It was at a time when Travellers were economically independent and when they traveled to make a living. At the age of 20, Johnny was asked to marry Maggie Mc Donagh. Her family came from up North Leinster area. They went on to have 11 children, one of whom died at the age of 6 months. They moved to Dublin in the late 60’s where they settled in Finglas, North Dublin city. Most of his children went to a segregated school for Travellers and availed of some formal education -- more than Johnny himself had received.
From the early years of Johnny moving to Dublin, he had, in one way or another, positive contact with settled people, whether it was him having a drink or playing pool in the local pub to organizing a football match or singing in the local.
Johnny started to engage with cultural events in the area where he told stories of his life experience of Travellers and of traveling. Through a chance meeting with one interested individual in Finglas Library, he was encouraged to put his stories and poems down in writing. It was a long process as Johnny himself could not read or write. He used family, friends and any one else he could get, to sit with him to write his poems and stories. He needed to make sure that it was written the way he said them.
From this Johnny was contacted by a number of groups and organizations to come and tell his story. He did so with enthusiasm. He loved performing his songs, telling his stories and poems. He wasn’t aware of the impact of this work on the people he meet or the positive image of Travellers he was portraying.
Johnny went on to do a number of live performances on Saturday Night Live with Pat Kenny. He was part of the Abbey Theatre’s production of written Brian McMahon’s play, The Honey Spike, as well as appearing in Glenroe and Man about Dog. He toured England and Ireland with his son Michael Collins, whose shows he would open with his songs, stories and poems.
He took on to record his songs on CD. After months of coaxing from his son and friends he went into studio with Wally Page and Johnny Mulhern. They didn’t set out to record the next Number One -- they went in to record something they all feared would be lost for ever if not recorded.
Not long after, and before the second CD was launched, Johnny was diagnosed with lung cancer. He had six short months left. It was during this time he had time to reflect on his life -- the things he go a chance to do, the people he met.
His CD was launched on the 18th December 2006 and his loved ones kindly referred to it as ‘his wake’ and not many people get to attend their own wake. The CD was launched in the Cobblestone pub, his favorite place in the world after Eddenderry where he was reared. The night was not a sad night. There was friends and family singing. People from the storytelling clubs came and told a story or two. There were singers from the Góilin club and Traveller singers from as far and wide. There was some famous people there too: Mick Lally, Jack Lynch, Sean McGinley, Sean Tyrrell and the Leech family, Nelly Weldon and Johnny’s son, Michael Collins of Glenroe fame, who has been writing and performing his own plays for the last number of years and who continues with the tradition of storytelling in a contemporary way
We remember Johnny Collins. Born 26 April 1944 Co. Offaly -- Died 15th May 2007 Dublin, age 63 years.
