Yes, I am an Irish Music Tragic but an Irish/Mexican knees-up, celebrating the tale of the Irish American soldiers who crossed over to fight for the Mexicans in 1846? My giddy aunt!
"During the Mexican American war of 1846-1848 Captain John Riley and a small battalion of soldiers abandoned their pasts and futures in the burgeoning United States of America and followed their conscience - or their fortune perhaps - crossed the Rio Grande to fight side by side with the Mexican army under the command of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana. Reviled by the Manifest Destiny minded America of the day as traitors and deserters, they have largely been forgotten in the retelling of history. But to generations of Mexicans and Irish they are remembered to this day as heroes who fought bravely against an unjust and thinly-veiled war of aggression ..."
Paddy Moloney, The Chieftains.
Soubds like Liam Neeson narrating the intro there.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54PDlicm_94
So interesting how cultures cross and mix. I find it quite fascinating.
ReplyDeleteYep Irish, if they're not drinking undrinkable beer made from the waters of the Liffey, they are fighting in strange countries... My lot McCabe's were hired guns from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland hired by the O'Rourkes and O'Reilly's...I read where the O'Rourke's when sick of fighting the Saxon had then fought in Russia. An Irish army led by an O'Rourke took his army that way and many O'Rourke descendants remain there today...obviously because the beer of Russia and Lithuania tastes better than that brewed from Dublin's dark river...
ReplyDeleteI overlooked an important detail, your Captain John Riley was obviously an O'Reilly...and a proud Cavan man... See, when the O'Reilly's and O'Rourke's handed their lands and women folk over to the McCabe's they left to fight in foreign lands such as Mexico... So it wasn't the beer they were after...my mistake, it was the Tequila!
ReplyDeleteGoodness me! So the O'Rourkes and the O'Reillys paid the McCabes in land and women? What about my lot, the O'Sullivans? I think they just drank and played the violin a lot and left the fighting to everyone else.
ReplyDeleteYeah I am sure they played violin and drank plenty... O'Sullivan- ó Súilleabháin- “dark-eyed” must be from all the fights they found themselves engaged in... Black-eyed and all!! The O’Sullivan’s played violins and left fighting to everyone else??? Phhwrrr lol Sarah you’re a funny one... That poor Grace Sullivan from that famous Australian TV drama seemed to have her feet in both WW1 and WW2, poor thing, her whole family seemed involved in war. And I guess by playing violins you wouldn’t be referring to that O’Sullivan who worked as the chief IRA executioner in London during the 1920s... And another of your family, in his own words,
ReplyDelete“The main characters in The Wind That Shakes the Barley are Damian and Teddy, brothers who join the independence struggle and then take opposing sides in the civil war, with fatal consequences. Mr O'Suilleabhain's father, Michael, and uncle Eamonn fought against the British. There was, however, no family split, both the men siding with the republicans against the Irish Free State. Michael, having survived the war against the British, was shot in the mouth during a firefight with Free State troops during the civil war at the age of 20. At one stage a grave was dug for him, but he confounded his doctors by recovering. He later married his nurse.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/legacy-of-the-black-and-tans-ballyvourney-where-the-wind-really-shakes-the-barley-407464.html).
Yeah, me thinks you O'Suilleabhain's/O’Sullivans drink/drank and play/ed the violin to forget how it is/was that your lot have dark eyes...
Yes, this country has seen its fair share of high jinx alright. Was a time when nobody could romance sorrow like the Paddys..
ReplyDeleteI stand properly corrected Tim! An interesting slant on the 'dark-eyed' O sullivans!
ReplyDeleteYes, well, your lot could have some dark-eyed Spanish Armada connection... But I think the dark-eyed ones are also mentioned in the Secret of Roan Inish:
ReplyDelete"Everyone saw him row out in his boat alone with the lobster creels, and everyone saw him come home again with the strange girl in the stern. And strange she was by all accounts, with great dark eyes and wild black hair blowing about her face -- it was easy to see that she never came from the islands. But when they asked Ian where he had found her, he merely replied that she came from the Ron Mor Skerry. Now that, of course, was nonsense, for the Ron Mor Skerry is only a rock off the end of Ron Mor Island. Nobody ever goes there at all except the old gray seals, and even they must leave when the tide is high, for then great waves wash over the rocks and the skerry is submerged." (http://echoes.devin.com/selkie/ronmor.html).
Yep, I think the dark eyes of the O'Suilleabhain's/O’Sullivans might relate to their Selkie ancestors... But then again, dark eyes, black eyes and all, who ever knew a seal who wouldn't fight for a fish or two!?