Folklore: Wild Geese

Subject: Wild Geese
From: Strupag
Date: 21 Feb 03 - 07:13 PM

I have always thought that seeing the wild geese fly over is one of the most spiritual things on earth.
I love songs about the wild geese. There is Jim Hunter's "The way of the white Cloud" and "I saw the wild geese fly" by Jim Reed and The Foundry Bar Band (Author Violet ?)
Anyway, I've been told that the wild geese can repreasent, after death, a soul returning to it's homeland.
In the case of my father, an Argyle man, who died in Ayr-Shire.
It was on Christmas Eve. When I got up the next day there was a long "V" shape of wild geese in the sky.
I'm not the most religious person but I truly he was up there returning to his native Kintyre.
Is this just a Scottish or Celtic thing or do any of you far flung mudcatters have similar experiences

Subject: RE: Wild Geese
From: Alba
Date: 21 Feb 03 - 09:41 PM

On Christmas Eve when I was 8 years old I had scarlet fever. my mother wouldn't let them take me to the hospital so I was in the main bedroom of the house ( in Scotland)...seems I had been pretty much out of it for about two weeks. On this particular night I had been very sick and they called in the Doc and things were looking grim...so they tell me ....at 3am I seemed to waken up and I asked for a drink...at that moment (and I remember it well) my Father (who was standing at the window) called my Gran over and they both watched a flock of geese fly over the house......when I asked my Dad what was going on...not the exact words I used ...he said they came to take you with them but they left without you........I have never forgotten that and now whenever I see the wild geese fly over my house here in maine I always remember it. I too love the song " I saw the wild geese fly" Thanks for jogging my memory of that Strupag.

Subject: RE: Wild Geese
From: katlaughing
Date: 21 Feb 03 - 10:46 PM

Beautiful, Alba, so glad they left you behind.:-)

Strupag, same feelings for them over here. You might enjoy this bit I wrote in 1999 in a Thought for the Day thread: clickety.

Thanks,

kat

Subject: RE: Wild Geese
From: GUEST,bdatki
Date: 21 Feb 03 - 11:12 PM

Mike Seeger plays a song called Lost Gander that is pretty cool. Its an instrumental but it has a certain feeling.

Subject: RE: Wild Geese
From: TIA
Date: 21 Feb 03 - 11:35 PM

I'm a huge fan of Wild Geese -- particularly Gerry O'connor. Never saw him flying in a V overhead with Manus Lunny and company, but it may have happened.

Subject: RE: Wild Geese
From: DonMeixner
Date: 22 Feb 03 - 12:29 AM

I Have tried to sing The Wild Geese(Norland Wind) for years and find it just beyond my range. There is no more lovely bit of poetry out there to be sung.   First heard from Cilla Fisher and then by Jim Reid. What poetry.

Don

Subject: RE: Wild Geese
From: GUEST,Blackford John
Date: 22 Feb 03 - 04:02 PM

Violet Jacob wrote "The Wild Geese" or "Norland Wind".

I am fortunate to live two miles from where thousands of pinkfeet (some greylag and occassional Ross's) gather every autumn. I too link the arrival of the geese with the loss of my mother. I had not heard of some of the folklore that previous writers have described, but identify with it.

I now love the arrival of the geese as they bring notice that winter is coming, much the same as when the oystercatchers start to take up their inland territories in March.

Subject: RE: Wild Geese
From: SINSULL
Date: 22 Feb 03 - 09:28 PM

Alba,
Where in Maine are you?
I have not heard that legend before. There is a legend about dolphins taking in the souls of the departed. And of course, some cultures refuse to kill seals who may be their ancestors.
Mary

Subject: RE: Wild Geese
From: Metchosin
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 02:48 AM

two other "wild goose" songs that come to my mind are The Wild Goose Shanty or Ranzo and The Cry of the Wild Goose (Terry Gilkyson) as sung by Frankie Laine. Not spiritual particularly, but both haunting in their own way.

Subject: RE: Wild Geese
From: Mad Tom
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 03:06 AM

There's a tune that the Chieftains play, called "The Wild Geese".
IIRC the liner notes say it's about the Irish emigrating to America.

Q: Why is the "V" formation that geese fly in usually longer on one side or the other?
A: Because one side has more geese in it.

Mad Tom - presently in the middle of the Tantramar Marshes (New Brunswick). The name is a corruption of an Acadian word, "tintamarre", meaning the loud noise caused by migrating waterfowl.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 04:04 AM

Wild geese - Canada geese, I think - are spending some time in a local park in Dublin at the moment. There's a football field which is built up on a plateau, and people walk around it on a path below; I went up on it a week or so ago and saw a huge flock - maybe 150 - of the geese; they were there for the next few days, but I haven't been back; don't want my dog to bother them.

In Irish terms, by the way, the phrase 'The Wild Geese' refers to the aristocrats who fled Ireland in the 1600s - as Yeats wrote:



Was it for this the wild geese spread

A grey wing upon every tide?

These particular wild geese abandoned Ireland in a tactical retreat - famously leaving thoroughbred horses dancing riderless on the quays with silver-decorated bridles jingling - and spread across Europe looking for help which they never got. Hugh O'Neill, one of their leaders, died of melancholy in Rome, I think; Red Hugh O'Donnell was allegedly poisoned by an English agent in Spain - there's another fabulous poem about him here: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/redhugh.html

And here's an old poem we learned in school: http://www.bartleby.com/250/108.html

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: rich-joy
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 04:14 AM

The Wild Goose by Wade Hemsworth has long been one of my favourite songs and I'd love to sing it, though it tests my range somewhat!!
I have it on a Jon Bartlett (and Rika Ruebsaat) tape of Canadian folksongs - can anyone recommend other versions as well??

Cheers! R-J

(oh dear, I've just realised that I've not first checked all those references above and someone's SURE to scold - maybe I'll just apologise in advance ... *weak grin*)

Subject: Lyr Add: THE WILD GOOSE (Wade Hemsworth)
From: Metchosin
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 04:42 AM

Ryan's Fancy recorded it.

The Wild Goose (Wade Hemsworth)

On Pukaskwa River so early this morning
While mending my trumpline I hear the geese calling
Over the brule, long clamouring cry
Flying formation against the grey sky

Chorus:

Comes the wild goose
The wild goose
High over the north shore
And I'm going home

The river is open but the lake's frozen over;
It's time to pack out when so late in October
Winter's a-coming, the wild geese know
We've had a long fall and it's time to go

With the wild goose
The wild goose
High over the north shore
And I'm going home

I've made lots of money, got money to burn
And when I have spent it I know I'll return
After the freeze-up, when snow is dry,
For to work in the tall woods - I wish that I

Were a wild goose
The wild goose
High over the north shore
And I'm going home

I've worked in the bush and spent money in town;
I'd like to get married but I can't settle down
At the last portage, when I'll pack no more
Let me fly with the wild goose high over north shore

With the wild goose,
The wild goose,
High over the north shore
And I'm going home

© 1962 Southern Publishing Co. Ltd.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: SINSULL
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 09:35 AM

Whenever I hear the Frankie Lane "Cry Of The Wild Goose", (it's on a taped collection of songs I play in my car), I think of the feather left on her pillow and what a polite goose he really was. Most leave piles of goose crap...but in a way he did too.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: Alba
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 10:16 AM

I live near Greenville Sinsull.
My father originally came from Donegal and my Grandmother came from Bridge of Weir in Scotland, I don't know if the Geese are a part of either place's folklore and until I read Strupag's post I hadn't really thought about that evening in a folklore context, more of a spiritual one but I will ask my Dad when I speak to him and see what he has to say about it. I have heard Seal folklore still alive and being told in Ireland and in the Western Hebrides in Scotland. Selkies..(seals) are the souls of the departed and there are many stories and songs about them.
Alba

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: GUEST,Julia
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 12:42 PM

Alba- thanks for that wonderful tale. Here on the coast (Round Pond Maine) we have stories of ships coming for souls, but I like the geese one better. In fact, do you mind if I use your story? I am a Celtic harper and songwriter and I think there's a song here..
Thanks- Julia
BTW- would like to hear more about your family coming to Maine as Celtic immigration to Maine is one of my many projects. PLease e-mail me at [e-mail] if you'd like to share stories

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: Alba
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 12:52 PM

Stories are for telling Julia, please use as you wish:>) Email address noted, will be in touch.
Regards
Alba

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: Metchosin
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 01:01 PM

Sinsull, does your recording Frankie Laine have the line "a wandering fool or a heart at rest" or a "wandering foot"?   I loved this song when I was small and still have my Dad's original 78 RPM of it, can't remember the artist right now, but I believe recorded earlier than Frankie's version. I always sing it as a "wandering foot", but have seen it transcribed as "fool" and wondered if it was a misheard word, on my part, or the recording I have differs from Laine's version.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: Alba
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 01:19 PM

Guest-Julia, I tried to email you but it won't send to the address you gave!!!! HELP:>)
Alba

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 02:40 PM

Alba- strange! Should work okay... you could also try [e-mail] Thanks- looking forward to it

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: Gareth
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 04:10 PM

Historical Interlude

Wern't the Wild Geese those sons of Erin who left the Emerald Isle for thier countries good and took up military srevice with the Kings of France and Spain ??

BTW I've herd from old sailors and the like around the London River that seagull contain the souls of sailors - Any coment ??

Gareth

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 04:22 PM

Many of the old Celtic myths have references to humans who are transformed to geese or swans.(see the song- Molly Ban or Polly Vaughn) Both of these birds have very long lives and a mystical quality. Geese mate for life (yes, they really do, unlike lobsters..)
best- Julia

BTW, doesn't Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner have something to do with sailors and seagulls?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: Gareth
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 04:27 PM

Albatrosses, Guest, Albatrosses ! (SP)

Gareth

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 04:29 PM

Yup, the first Wild Geese were the aristocrats, but the term was later used for the sons of the Catholic aristocracy who headed into military service with France and Spain and Austria, and then later again to other flights of Irish emigrants.

Seagull in Irish is derived from an old name for a wolf; literally the name - Faolain or Faolog (with an accent on the second a or the second o respectively) means "little wolf".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 07:01 PM

And Frankie Lane's recording was of the Terry Gilkyson song. Gilkyson's recording had a guitar backup by Merle Travis, who later recorded a guitar solo version "Cry of the Wild Guitar.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: Dian
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 07:12 PM

I remember reading a tale of a magic wild goose which hatched fully grown from an egg. I have never been able to find it again. Any ideas?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: mg
Date: 02 Mar 03 - 01:08 AM

here is Jim Reid singing the Wild Geese by Violet Jacob..very pretty...

http://www.springthyme.co.uk/album15/15songtexts.html

click here

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: winterchild
Date: 02 Mar 03 - 01:49 AM

Wow! This brings back memories.

I lived in Ayreshire, but I don't remember the geese there - it was the rooks, settling down in the trees across the river Doone, as the sun went down, that mean Scotland to me.

But the Geese - Ah! Hearing the wild geese every fall, crying and calling as they flew overhead in the windy heavens. In eastcoast America, I never lived anywhere they did not pass, and I always felt that they were calling to some part of me to fly with them. I would literally heaken to them, indoors or out, when nobody else noticed the distant gabble.

And then there was one time that I recall vividly, that was like a scene out of a movie. There I was, at Pennsic, a medieval reenactment event with a cast of thousands held in Pennsylvania. In those days, the area where the fighters armed and armored themselves before battle was a large, sloping grassy field with woods on all sides and a lake at its foot past some trees.
So, there I was, standing above the arming field, on a fresh, beautiful early morning in August, holding someone's spare arms for him, files of warriors marching past on the road to the battlefield, the clatter of armor as others armed and drew up in formation, hundreds of us gathered in that field in pursuit of our consensual reality, our "dream", and a flock of geese came in, low and slow and very loud, and flew over the field in the direction of the battlefield. I don't know how to explain it, but it was perfect. As one might say in the parlance of that group, _that_ was "living the dream"!

Winterchild

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 02 Mar 03 - 03:51 PM

Metchosin - the tune for the Hemsworth song?? That's beautiful.

~ Becky in Tucson
no geese here, *snff*

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 02 Mar 03 - 03:53 PM

Whoops, there it is in the link at the top: Wade Hemsworth's Wild Goose.

~ Becky

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: GUEST,T-tone
Date: 02 Mar 03 - 10:21 PM

There is a line in a Bob Dylan song: When I paint my Masterpiece, which has a mention of wild geese too. It's a beautiful song about a lot of different things. I'm not sure what album it's on though. It would be worth the time to track it down...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: mg
Date: 02 Mar 03 - 10:56 PM

sea shanty..Ranzo. Have you heard the wild geese?

mg

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: open mike
Date: 03 Mar 03 - 01:54 AM

Anie Dillard mentions that tame barnyard fowl(foul?)
get agitated and restless when they hear their
wild cousins flying over...stirs their souls...
I especially react when i hear the "chortle" of
Sand Hills Cranes flying over..their call is more
musical than the ducks and geese, and their legs and
necks ever so much longer. The Sand Hills are in
Western Nebraska, and I remember an experiment I
heard of once there where the rare whooping crane
(eggs or chicks?) were adopted into the more plentiful
Sand hills crane nest or colony--with a successful
out come as i remember..
....thread creep here....other migrating water fowl
sand hills crane
whooping cranes
My children and I were fortunate to observe the fantastic
mating dances of the Sand Hills Cranes once west of the Teton
mountains in Idaho--Very Exhillarating, for us and the birds no doubt.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: Celtaddict
Date: 13 Apr 03 - 09:43 PM

Metchosin: I am personally sure it is "a wandering foot or a heart at rest" not only because the parallel structure demands it but also that is the way it is recorded in no less an authority than the Hootenanny Songbook.
A term I have loved for years is the old term "gabble ratchet," the cry of the wild geese as they cry. It comes from the "gabble" which is not onomatopoetic as it sounds, but is a corruption of "Gabriel." The "ratchet" is from the old word for a hound, and appears in a number of the old ballads. So the crying of the geese overhead is the baying of "Gabriel's hounds." I wonder if the term "gabble" to describe the noise comes from there rather than simple imitation. The idea of the Hounds of Heaven seems to fit right in with Alba's story.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 14 Apr 03 - 06:50 PM

When I was a nipper we had a domestic goose that used to waddle down the coop looking forlornly up when the wild geese flew over. I felt sorry for that goose. We ate it. Now I live in Canada where this bird -- one of our most endearing national emblems -- is cursed for the amout of crap it leaves on lake beaches.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Apr 03 - 07:55 PM

There's a blues song with a verse;
'Laid down last night, just to tkae my rest;
My mind stasrted rambling like the wild geese in the west."

That verse always did something to me. Anybody know where that came from?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Wild Geese
From: Ely
Date: 14 Apr 03 - 10:57 PM

When I was little, in Colorado, my brother and I would get up early on cold mornings and crawl into our parents' big bed. They had a window above the bed and sliding glass doors (leading onto a deck); our house was on the top of a hill and you could see all the way to the mountains with no other houses or trees in between, so we could always see geese flying south for the winter.

The "wild geese" song I always think of is the one (I assume this is the emigration one mentioned earlier) about "when the ship has raised its anchor/come what may I will always care/when you hear the wild geese calling/think of me and I'll be right there" that goes to the tune of "Planxty John Irwin".