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Anyone Know Any Wild Geese Stories?

28 Oct 99 - 10:14 PM (#129261)
Subject: Anyone Know Any Wild Geese Stories?
From: Mbo

I am a big fan of the history of the "Wild Geese" viz. the Irish soldiers who left the English-oppressed Ireland to fight in Europe. Currently, I am composing songs and tunes, as well as collecting traditional pieces, about the Wild Geese for a sort of "Celtic Oratorio" that I'm putting together. The thing is, I need a good story line. Does anyone know of any stories or plays dealing primarily with this subject? The ECU library has TONS of Irish literature & plays, but I'd like some recommendations before I start tearing through these tomes. Thanks!

--Mbo

28 Oct 99 - 11:18 PM (#129284)
Subject: RE: Anyone Know Any Wild Geese Stories?
From: DonMeixner

Just a guy named Hennesey who had something to do with Cognac.

29 Oct 99 - 12:24 AM (#129307)
Subject: RE: Anyone Know Any Wild Geese Stories?
From: JedMarum

I briefly touch on the subject in one of my songs from true stories my father's grandfather told of his immigration from Galway.

The land was rich in beauty, magic and song
but it was hard to raise a family working someone else's farm
we kissed our Mom and sisters, my Da' he gave us fare
with me brothers Sean and Michael, I left them standing there, so long ago

We spent a time in England, and we sent a bit back home
But Michael took to drink and in two years he was gone
I moved on to Boston when Sean joined the fusileers
and I haven't seen the others for five and thirty years ...

and so on ...

I don't know what happened to Sean.

29 Oct 99 - 06:32 PM (#129631)
Subject: RE: Anyone Know Any Wild Geese Stories?
From: jtt

Sure - what about the central image of the Wild Geese: the original 100 aristocrats who fled the Elizabethan Plantation, first speeding around the country to collect the children of their families who were fostered out to other families - one of the O'Neills couldn't be found because he was booleying in Coolea or Bansha or somewhere - and then left their thoroughbred horses rearing riderless in their silver-trimmed harnesses and saddles of Spanish leather as they sailed away at speed.

There's a song "Condae Maigh Eo", translated into English as The County of Mayo, with longing memories of the earl Patrick Lynch "On the deck of Patrick Lynch's boat", and wishing to be "sailing, sailing swiftly to the county of Mayo".

And of course the story of Sarsfield, in a later age, dying on a foreign field fighting for a foreign army and dipping his hand in his lifeblood saying "Would that this blood were shed for Ireland".

Enough of a start ;)

30 Oct 99 - 05:26 AM (#129779)
Subject: RE: Anyone Know Any Wild Geese Stories?
From: jtt

Oh yes, Hennessy - the founder of the Hennessy brandy business (which still awards a prestigious Irish literary prize, won by every notable Irish writer of modern times) was one of what's jokingly known as the Wine Geese.

When the Wild Geese fled spreading "a grey wing on every tide", as the poem has it, a good lot of them went to Bordeaux, where their descendants still make some of the region's most famous wines.

Jacobite familes spread along the west coast of Ireland continued to keep contact, sending their teenagers to be fostered and schooled in these families, for generations. In fact these contacts are still kept up. - JTT