The common Irish phrase "down the glen", meaning "doomed" or "lost to hope" comes from this song; it's sometimes abbreviated to "jackets green".

Virtually all of the Wild Geese, as the Irish officers Sarsfield led to France on 22 December 1691 were afterwards called (reputedly because they were listed as a cargo of wild geese by the captain of one of the ships that carried them) were dead within two years; they were eagerly accepted into various European armies where they became cannon-fodder, fighting desperately and hopelessly. When the young Sarsfield was dying of wounds sustained in the Battle of Landen two years later, he is said to have dabbled his hands in the blood pouring from him with the words "Would that this blood were shed for Ireland".

They had left as a condition of the Treaty of Limerick, whose other agreements were immediately broken by the English.