A lock of hair taken from the head of Irish revolutionary Michael Collins has been withdrawn from sale at auction after complaints from his descendants, the auction house said.

“The item has been withdrawn by the owner and is being donated to the National Museum,” a spokesman for Adam’s auctioneers said.

Collins was shot dead during the Irish civil war in 1922, and his body brought from southwest Ireland to Dublin, where it lay in state at City Hall.

The proposed sale of his hair comes ahead of the centenary of Ireland’s Easter 1916 rising against British rule, which has increased the market for such items of the period.

The hair had a guide price of €5,000.

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