Hibernia, Irish Song of the Pampa

Now two years have pass'd and gone though they like centuries appear 

Since, sad, forlorn, and alone I sail'd from Ireland dear 

though I ne'er may see it more my thoughts long languish o’er, 

Can I forget my childhood home my own loved Hibernia's shore?

 

When standing at my rancho door or riding o'er the pampa plain

I silently long to hear the sweet voices of her labouring swain,  

Though the pampas may have fields as fair and green all o’er

To me there is no soil that yields like my own Hibernia's shore. 

 

I long to see my native groves where oft’ I've chased the bounding hare

And snar'd the woodcock and the doves, listening to the cuckoo's voice so clear, 

Oh! had I but an eagle's wings across the Atlantic I would soar,

I’d think no more of earthly things ‘til safe upon Hibernia's shore. 

 

Oh could I cope with bards of yore I'd proudly write in words sublime

The praises of her fertile shore while life stands in her youthful prime
For when I'm sinking towards the tomb my feeble hand can trace no more
The words I'd write of that dear home my owned loved Hibernia's shore

 

Though there are comforts, beyond La Plata's mouth, where the Indian once did freely roam,

Still I'd forsake the pleasures of the South
for my own dear native home 

Old Erin for thee my heart is weap'd in grief a heart that's Irish to the core


Long may I love the Shamrock Leaf
that grows round Hibernia's shore. 

Filmed on the farm of Fernando Sheridan, a farmer and vet in Juan José Castelli, Chaco, Argentina, where I have been living on and off the past few years.

Fernando’s grandfather emigrated from Ireland in the 1870's and settled in Capilla del Señor, the same town where Hibernia was published in El Monitor de la Campaña (No. 43, 15 April 1872). The song was signed J. J. M. The video is an outtake from the film "The Trackless Wild, Song of A Wandering Tip."

Ecos Amigos: Irish Ballads on the Argentine Pampa

"The Patagonian Seaboards" 1872

Through the making of The Trackless Wild, a documentary film and album of the same name, this piece follows my own wanderings and wonderings with the Irish in Argentina. The film "The Trackless Wild, Song of A Wandering Tip" was completed in October 2025, the album "The Trackless Wild" was released in 2024.

saludos,

Charlie

GRAVITY & ACTION

Two years ago I arrived in Argentina. The path echoes roads trodden before. These echoes come in music. I’d spent a year and a half ensconced in Mexico through the Covid years, and after that was back in Ireland for a few months that felt like trying to resolve and rejoin what I’d left behind.

I first started singing two old Irish-Argentine ballads more than fifteen years ago. The inexorable gravity that drew me to Argentina must have first rumbled into action back then. It wasn’t the first time I’d followed a song into strange territory, the last time I got that entangled was in Havana; at the first presentation of "A Captain Unafraid.” I introduced that documentary of mine to 400 curious Cubans on the anniversary of Captain “Dynamite” Johnny O’Brien’s death, invoking his ghost with his words: “the summons came and was responded to in the way that distinguishes that which is preordained.” I’d written a song about Johnny many years before, and ended up following his trail across Cuba, Cavan, and New York, drawn inexorably into the narrowing gyre of his story. Life, and so art and music, seems to come from a strange intersection of gravity and action. Summoning in song spirits long gone, past echoes bring future sounds.

At the Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires, I exhale and sing a bunch of Irish-in-Latin-American songs I’ve found or made here and there, the first concert of a tour across the Pampas. The Pampas are the low South American grasslands that cover large tracts of the continent, synonymous with the provinces of Buenos Aires and La Pampa, where Irish immigrants settled. One Miguel Guarnochea comes up to me after the concert, surprised to hear two forgotten ballads from his hometown of Capilla sung. Miguel promises to share with me the complete digital archives of the 19th century newspaper "El Monitor de

La Campaña" that these songs first appeared in. And there begins two years of peering into the past. Digging out old gems, I find many more old Irish-Argentine songs mixed up among pages and pages of articles on corn, cattle, wheat, guns, death notices and marriage. It was easy to breathe life and sound back into the lyrics. One of the songs ends help me scarce lament the land and home I left behind, telling us it is an Irish-Argentine version of the old Irish ballad "the home I left behind."

Capilla del Señor is a small town 80 kms north of the city of Buenos Aires, where many Irish immigrants settled. “El Monitor,” printed there in 1872/73, is an important archive of the early history of the town. Another one of these ballads begins now two years have past and gone though they like centuries appear. I have been in the country two years as I write these words, closing in on past resonances. Echoes resound calling to remember. The author of five of these songs signed his name "A Wandering Tip." Delving into his words I sing his lost songs out again. Resurrecting these lyrics of old, he time travels to our timeline as I muse and sing my way into the past. One of his songs is called “The Trackless Wild.” Song, in some ways, is like prayer, in that, it often seems no-one is listening, but the declarations and incantations can bring us, draw us towards some unlikely, far flung, often beautiful destinations. Though I'm not one for prayer, I do sing. And it is important to wish, to envisage, to sing, to remember. Whether it was myself or the songs that took me to those wild places I guess I'll never know, a combination of both, I suppose. I've sung “The Trackless Wild” all around the pubs of Kerry, in bars in Tompkins Square, New York, out in Cuba. I've sung the words beautifully, badly, when no-one was listening and when you could hear a pin drop. I've sung drunk, sober, merry and sad. Its no stretch to say that song took me to where I now write these words, a few miles from el Rio de La Plata, where A Wandering Tip wrote...

Hail La Plata though by birth an exile from your shore

Style frame from the animated segments of "The Trackless Wild"

GHOSTS OF SAN TELMO

In my three sojourns in Buenos Aires I have, without meaning to, ended up staying in San Telmo. The oldest neighbourhood in the city has a formidable gravity. I met some fierce characters there, even Irish-Argentines amongst the melee. Veronica, one of the organisers of the Irish Symposium that I was booked to play at, happened to be living around the corner from us on my first stay in the city. What was once an African-Argentine neighbourhood is now thoroughly creolised, it holds the truth of what makes Argentina special-its thorough mix-up of many cultures. San Telmo is where two British invasions were repelled, and the locals poured boiling oil down on the invaders. Like many invasions in colonial times, it served to galvanise the people's sense of self, and from here emerged the nascent Argentine nation. Incidentally, some of the leaders of both the Spanish and British forces had Irish connections. General William Carr Beresford, the illegitimate son of the first marquess of Waterford, commanded the British forces, and the cavalry of the Spanish was commanded by Juan Martín de Pueyrredón y O'Dogan.

In the Centro Cultural Walsh, we saw a darker side to the bustling San Telmo. A previously amicable manager seemed to have taken a turn for the worse on a not known quantity of drugs. I was booked to play, and we had prepped the place a few weeks previously, but by the time the day rolled round the previous organisation, manager and plans had unravelled! Even so, I got to sing, but the atmosphere was charged, let's say. The Centre is named after famed Irish Argentine, Rodolfo Walsh, the founder of investigative journalism in Argentina. Rodolfo’s true and honest vision unfortunately collided with the worst days of the dictatorship and his words were finally silenced by machine gun fire, taking him to the next world. The Cultural Centre was adorned with images of another famous Irish-Argentine, Ché Guevara. The Irishness of both these figures though well attested would not be well known by Argentines, they are at the end of the day really just Argentine.

Though the stereotype of the Irish in Argentina, within the country, is of rich conservative landowners, digging a little deeper you will find people of all castes and creeds that have “Irish blood in their veins,” as Che’s father Ernesto Guevara Lynch once said of his son. In a way, you could say the spirit of the likes of Maria Elena Walsh, Ché Guevara Lynch and Rodolfo Walsh is a reaction to their conservative Irish upbringing. Certainly this is the case with Maria Elena and Rodolfo, they mention it in their writings. Indeed, Rodolfo’s last unpublished novel was to delve into his Irish-Argentine upbringing, unfortunately it disappeared when he died.

Atahualpa Yupanqui, champion of indigenous argentines, communist party member and icon of Argentine folk music, is another figure with an Irish strand to his roots. Even José Hernandez, one of the country's most celebrated writers, had an Irish antecedent. José’s great grandmother was one Rita O’Doghan. There are some families that even until today have married only amongst Irish, but it is very much the exception. That first green strand of Irish migration to the country has long melded into the rich tapestry of the Argentine nation. Irish were some of the first immigrants after the Spanish, and their minor wave reached the shore, ebbed and flowed away, leaving its mark, long before the deluge of Italians that flooded the country at the end of the 19th century.

After 1889, Irish migration to Argentina was uncommon in the country. This was in no small part due to what was politely called “the Dresden affair” where 2000 Irish immigrants in 1889 (having been promised all) were dumped on the pier of Buenos Aires to fend for themselves. This was the single largest group of immigrants to arrive into the city up until that point. Having written a song about The Dresden years before ever setting foot in Argentina, it was a ghostly experience to come upon the streets and names associated with the song, places like Paseo de Julio, Túcuman Street, and Balcarce. They say that the madames of the city's brothels pulled up in splendorous carriages and clothing to where the homeless were sheltered and ran off soon again with some young Irish girls in tow. This started a long tradition of Irish madames in the city, which it seems was a stereotype for a half century afterwards.

A few weeks later, after a concert in the wilds of General Las Heras, we returned late to Balcarce Street. Aidan Connolly, the brave Dublin fiddler, joined me on this recent music tour of the Pampa. After playing to a barn full of loud Irish descendants in the countryside, we wound down at the quiet Bar de Borges back in San Telmo. In an impromptu late night session we exchanged tango and Irish trad. with local musicians who go there to come down after more high octane gigs in the city. As we wound down our winding down, I approached the bar to pay, I thought the owner was offering us free drinks for playing, turns out he just said “moments like these are priceless!”


FOLLOWING PADDY O’ER THE PAMPA

during the last week of filming for "The Trackless Wild"

The next day, getting a taxi to Retiro, the main train station in the city, the car we hailed was driven by a man called Coleman. When I answered the obligatory “Where you from?” with “Ireland.” He broke into a long smile, “My name is Coleman, I’m the only black Irishman in Buenos Aires." "We are compatriots!” he added wryly.

All dotted around the countryside of Buenos Aires are towns with Irish descendants. In Mercedes, you will find the church of St. Patrick, where three Irish born priests still say mass. The school next door has a 

mural to Padre Alfredo Kelly murdered at another St. Patrick’s church in the city of Buenos Aires in the dark days of the dictadura. In the same square as the school is the pub el Irlandés where I, the night before, had met up with an Irish born immigrant, John Kelly. Replete with boina vasca nd hundreds of heads of cattle, John keeps strong the tradition of the Irish Gaucho. Like A Wandering Tip in “The Trackless Wild”, he embraces Argentine traditions while never forgetting his homeland, skin browned by the southern cross’s sun, a sun that, though it burns, will never dull memories of home.

Scenes no southern cross can scorch in memories verdant plains,
Though bronzed may be the tenement where in such fancy reigns.

John runs a farm on the outskirts of the town on land leased from the Palatine religious order. A few weeks before my visit there I was reading about Sarmiento, champion of public education and Argentine president from 1868-74. Unfortunately, Sarmiento was no champion to the Irish, and once proclaimed “the Irish rabble, organised by their priests, are rabid drunkards.” Though I’m not at all religious, what a pleasure to revel in his words-myself and John had a proper Irish session at the pub el Irlandés surrounded by a cartel of priests. One member of the clergy was on banjo, another on bodhrán (the traditional Irish drum), more were watching on, myself and John ensconced between them all. Happily I sang out my Irish-Argentine songs surrounded by priests and pints!

The next day, with an existential hangover, I was brought on a tour of the church by the chaplain. The organ there is one the best in the country and Charly Garcia, the treasured Argentine rock icon, had performed an impromptu concert on it a few years back. The enthusiastic Chaplain next ushered us up to the bell tower, a step too far for my reeling head. I sat on the steps leading up to it, as he shouted with glee “¡viva San Patricio! ¡viva Irlanda!” and then rattled the hell out of the bells for the whole town to hear.

RESOUND BACK, SPRING FORWARD

during the filming of the song "Donovan's Mount"

What do we know of this man who wrote the majority of the songs printed in “El Monitor de la Campaña?” From one of the lyrics “Donovan’s Mount,” we can safely say he was at one time a travelling teacher. A Wandering Tip was one of many Irish who were employed by landlords to instil learning from the old country into the children of the various Irish scattered throughout the Buenos Aires countryside. In Donovan’s Mount our author writes a song in praise of the Donovan family who have recently employed him.


I roved round the camp* till I met with an Irishman
Whose houses and lands give appearance of joy,
I upped and I asked if he wanted a pedagogue
tipped him the wink that I was the boy.

Hip hip horray, hooray for Donavan’s,
For racing and spreeing I’ve found out the fount.

* Camp is a peculiarly Irish-Porteño word. Campo being the Spanish for countryside and Porteño being a native of Buenos Aires.


In another song Tip talks of tending sheep-the original industry of the Irish on the pampa’s plains. The basques and Irish were among the first settlers to colonise the plains surrounding Buenos Aires. Whether Tip was invoking his compatriots in song or was a shepherd himself, I guess we’ll never know.


I am a jolly shepherd boy
 and live upon the plain

Oh! once I was may parents’ joy ‘ere first I crossed the main

And all the comfort I now seek
is in the flowing glass

And stroll to town just once a week to court a Spanish lass.

Songs are a compass on the Trackless Wild, guiding us onwards, keeping us company on this strange dream called the world. In “The Pampa’s My Home” A Wandering Tip compares the vast grasslands of the Pampa to an ocean. What holds him to his course is his song.


Steer my bark, steer my bark o'er the wild pampa main
Oh ye winds be more calm there are shoals on the plain

Alone all alone on a rough rolling foam,
My bark it is launched and the pampa’s my home

On my own two year stay in the country I was mainly ensconced in the far north, in the town of Juan José Castelli next to a national park called el Impenetrable. On the twenty four hour bus journey to get there from Buenos Aires we rushed through Rosario, a town whose rough reputation precedes it. The bus driver stopped the bus before passing through the city warning us “pull across those curtains by your head, unless you want to lose an eye.” “I’m only telling you for your own safety, a friend of mine's eye was saved only because he pulled across one of those curtain.” It seems that in the rougher areas of the city that we were to pass through, kids take to flinging rocks at the buses for sport.

In Castelli I got to know the only Irish-Argentines in the town quite well. Fernando Sheridan is a very well regarded vet and farmer of 76 years of age, his family background is all Irish, except for one of his grandparents who married into the indigenous Qom tribe. The Qom are the original inhabitants of that area and comprise around 30 percent of the population. Fernando’s grandfather was a famine era stowaway who lived in Capilla, the little town that A Wandering Tip called home.

Fernando told us in hushed tones how his grandad was, as Tip’s song goes, “part of that confederation of kings, queens and quakers who indulge in potation.” He’d been told he was a fiercely intelligent lad, not afraid of a fight. These were only stories passed down to him, he didn’t ever get to know him. I was wide eyed with wonder when I heard his grandad and A Wandering Tip lived in the same town 1200km to the South of us. I am certain they must have known each other. Tip being fond of his tipple too. Indeed he may have talked about Fernando’s granda in his song The Bright Morning Dew! Who knows. At any rate, there was a strange resonance in Fernando’s stories.

“Naw boys” says our host as the doctor he spied,
“This room as you all see is lengthwise and wide,
Come then, let us finish this high jubilee
With the game that comes after an Irishman’s spree.”

The words were scarce ended when a bottle flew by,
Struck my hat and made blacker Ned’s rolling dark eye!

Besides Castelli I spent 6 months in Córdoba. The city seemed a bit more stuck in the doldrums of conservatism and recession that the forever bustling and ever changing Buenos Aires. A strange fantasy I found scattered here and there across fancier parts of town was a kind of fetishisation of medieval architecture and music. Think misplaced turrets, faux renaissance fairs and craft beer. Irish traditional music was often lumped into this melee where aspirationalism and capitalism meet the fairies of trouble or fortune. I steered my own bark far from those strange shores. Thinking on it, it must be a type of classism and aspirationalism tying themselves to crooked histories of the old world. Elevating themselves in a lonely tower above the native landscapes. I spotted a whole castle in one part of Villa Allende on the outskirts of the city. Maybe too it is just old human love of fantasy and reshaping the past and molding of new tales. Like I so often do myself. Saying that, I was not going to be seen sipping craft beer or stroking fiddles at frolicking medieval fairs!

Amongst all these Irish-Argentine ballads I’ve also had the company of other songs. Myself and Spanish Literature professor Manuelita Palavecino took to translating the early 19th century ballad “The Land of the Blest” into Spanish. I’ve been singing that tale of an unfortunate voyage to the enchanted island of Hy Brasil throughout my stay in Argentina.

En los mares que esculpen tus tierras de sal,

una isla nació, misteriosa, cuentan.

Un oasis de sol, una isla de paz,

tierra bendita, Hy Brasil, sin mal.

On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwell,
A shadowy land has appeared as they tell;
Some thought it a region of sunshine and rest
and they called it Hy Brasil the land of the blest.


Like the mythical island of Irish folklore, visions dissipate and only songs remain as imprints of lost islands and ideals. Songs, the sail me and A Wandering Tip pin to our masts, the force and inexorable wind that drives us forward. As Manuelita translates, I sing...

Ecos amigos velas de hogar y sal
En Ara está la vida y la libertad

Rash dreamer, return! O ye winds of the main,
Bear him back to his own peaceful Ara again.

FREEDOM UNADORNED

from the poster for the film "The Trackless Wild"

In the lyrics of The Trackless Wild much of the song is in praise and acknowledgement of the debt he owes his horse. He calls the horse a saino, which for many years I thought was a breed of horse, really it's just a colour. I learned this when I visited Capilla del Señor, the town where these songs were first printed. On the farm of Maria Julia Burgos, as the sun was coming down, I sang to a tired saino words of old.


At e’er as o'er the trackless wild my saino bounds along
My thoughts are of a pleasant land and of a gladsome throng

The horse seemed to enjoy my melody, closing his eyes peacefully letting the sounds go in and through him. Whether I sang for myself, the horse or a Wandering Tip, who knows? Through these incantations of Tip’s words, through his own hopes, our lives though separated by centuries undergo a strange melding. I echo his heartfelt sentiment in song. A strange synthesis of our own personal propaganda and heartfelt expression. What we are drawn to and what draws us to it, the ground we draw our inspiration from and the horse we ride upon. From Santa Rosa to Buenos Aires, and from Chaco to Cordoba I've sung “A Wandering Tip’s” song. Bringing the songs back to the museum where the printing press for “El Monitor de La Campaña” is housed, at a concert in the square outside, I sang for the descendants of those first Irish immigrants. I wondered while I sang if perhaps his great great grandchildren were quietly listening unbeknownst to me in the crowd. Or did it matter, is my act of making this personal pilgrimage praise enough?

Little reck I for them both my good steed and I,
Are sailing o’er the Pampa plain beneath his care on high


On my way to a concert in Santa Rosa, rattling through the pampa on a bus I tumbled verses around in my heart and head. The moon peeks out from the curve of my guitar case and me and A Wandering Tip rumble into a strange new city. Repeating the lines in my head, I incant…

Freedom on her regal seat upon this ocean plain,
and should we e’re from her retreat we’d follow in her train.

I like to imagine what “A Wandering Tip” would have thought of this resurrection of his muse. Of the raising of his flag again, his prayer to let...

Freedom unadorned hold, fast my roving mind
and help me scarce lament the land and home I left behind.

Did he imagine that his song would be woven into the fabric of new life in a new century, reaffirming his wistful and beautiful muse? Is this what freedom is? The prayer that all is connected and that we all go on in an unstoppable throng. Weaving in and out of one another’s influences as sure as gravity attracts heavenly objects and even pummels them into the ground. What grand tapestry is being woven? We have no idea, only that it has poignancy, beauty and horror, often in equal measure. All these elusive strands weave in and out of one another, their significance cannot be grasped, and threads though common and interlaced, finally disperse and find another form. And still we sing out our future songs and echo on.

The photos in this piece were taken by Ronnie Keegan, without whose help the last week of filming for "The Trackless Wild" wouldn't have been possible. The color illustration was made for the animated segments of the film by Gabriela Bran. 

'Exile & Adventure' album, 'The Trackless Wild' film

 

Yesterday I launched the crowdfunding campaign for my new film and album. After more than a year of trying and failing to acquire funds officially, I'm turning directly to the public to help get this worthy work done! Help me resurrect the voices of these 19th century Irish migrants in Argentina. By pre-ordering the Cd/Vinyl (or the streaming of the film itself), you can be part of the process as it happens. Have a gander at the options on the following link... 

https://charlieobrien.net/crowdfunding

The Pampa's My Home

This is the first single from my coming album "Exile & Adventure, Irish Song of the Pampa and further Afar." I found the words to this song in a newspaper from 1873 called "El Monitor de La Campaña." In amongst prices of cattle and weather predictions appeared this poem, signed by a man that called himself "A Wandering Tip." 

The Pampa's my Home was recorded in Villa Allende in Cordoba, Argentina. Thanks to multi talented luthier Fabrizio Rizotto for helping me with the recording, which was performed on his beautiful 19th century piano. The Pampas are the wide grasslands synonymous with rural regions of Buenos Aires in which Irish settled in the 19th century.  This song will be the closing piece in a new documentary I’ve been working on called “The Trackless Wild.” The film will explore the crossroads between myself and "A Wandering Tip" who penned five songs published in that old Argentine newspaper of the 1870’s. With my resurrection of his lyrics, he time-travels to our timeline as I muse and sing my way into the past.

Steer my bark, steer my bark o’er the wild Pampa main,
O ye winds be more calm there are shoals on the plain,
I’m alone, I’m alone on a rough rolling foam,
My bark is now launched and the pampas my home,

Then farewell oh farewell to that isle in the east
On whose green covered mountains my eyes may ne’er feast,
It was there, it was there a happy gay band,
I first dreamed the dream of the great Pampa land

Then guide her, I’ll guide her for hopes at the prow,
Though the clouds are still black and the thunder peals now,
Ha! She’s struck, my barks struck by that flash from the sky,
She’s immersed and oh God am I doomed now to die?

No not yet oh! Not yet like a bird of the deep,
My good bark comes forth with a youths hopeful leap,
It is past, it is past, the wish farther to roam,
The anchor is cast and the pampas my home.

(El Monitor de la Campaña, June 1873).

Viva Los San Patricios!

On the day that is in it, that being St Patrick's day, here's to the called Saol John Riley. My role was that of presenter-I followed the story of the leader of that bold Mexican brigade, John Riley, from famine torn Connemara to the Mexican American War of 1847. The song "Pa' Los del San Patricio" appeared on my first album Go raibh míle maith agat Séan Ó Garbhí, as ucht an cabhair a thug tú dom chun aistriúchán breá bríomhar a dhéanamh air ón leagan Bhéarla! I must try my hand at a Spanish version of the song too, somewhere further down the road!

Charlie O' Brien · Na San Patricios

Na San Patricios

Daichead a seacht i bhfad ró dhian,

Cailleadh anso iad ‘s i bhfad i gcéin,

Cailleadh iad i ngleanntá glasa na hÉireann

is crochadar ar cláracha Mheicsiceo

Dhá scór fearaibh ag feitheamh le bás

Sínte ar chroch ba thrua a gcás,

Le teas millteanach an mhéan lae

Thugadar leo go bhflaitheas dé.

Daichead a seacht i bhfad ró chrua

Cos ar bholg gan stad, gan suan,

Ó Vera Cruz le bratach in airde

Baileadar go cróga le céile.

Naomh Pádraig ‘s a cros

‘s iomaí fear a déag faoin bhreatach glas,

Lámh ar lámh le chéile,

Gach beachaint á réabadh.

Os cionn scamaill gan céilúir n-éan

General Lee lena airm féin

Cuireadh ruaig ar airm Valencia

Ach d-éalaíomar go caithair Mheicsiceo.

I ngort arbhar bhí na poncán clúdaithe

Thit siad ar an dtalamh lenár gunaí morá,

Lámh ar lámh le chéile,

gach beachaint á reabadh.

Luascadh an bhreatach bán trí uaire

Fós gearr Riley é síos gan bac air,

Géill siad faraor in ísle brí

i lochán dá fhuil féinig.

An Cruit, Naomh Padraig, ‘s an cros

“Éireann go brách” ar bhreatach glas,

Go dilís le chéile ‘s gunaí a pléascadh,

Gach beachaint á reabadh.

Dhá scór fearaibh ag feitheamh le bás

Sínte ar chroch ba thrua a gcás,

Le teas millteanach an mhéan lae

Thugadar leo go bhflaitheas dé.

Here's the English language version of the song, an outake from Saol John Riley. The song was filmed in Clifden, Ireland in 2009.

Pa’ Los Del San Patricio

47 too long a year, men died in chains men died in fear

some were lost under Irish sky and some on Mexico’s fields were hung.

The gallows there 14 feet high two score men condemned to die

hung at noon in scorching heat, three hours they waited bound hand and feet. 

47 too dark a year, men shook their chains and fell in fear

from Vera Cruz a flag unfurled many men rallied round it.

A Mexican eagle and a Celtic cross under the green flag men were lost

shot down as soldiers, hung as slaves their cruel fate a shallow grave.

Birds wouldn’t cross the Pedragal through it General Lee he carved a path

Valencia’s army were routed there Churubusco’s fate was calling.

The Yankees tumbled through high corn at Churubusco we shot them down 

Mexican guns they soon gave out with bayonets we joined the slaughter.

Three times the white flag swung round three times O’Riley pulled it down 

when blood ran down into the sand only then did they surrender. 

The Mexican eagle and a Celtic cross under the green flag men were lost

Shot down as soldiers, hung as slaves their cruel fate a shallow grave. 

The gallows there 14 feet high two score men condemned to die

Hung at noon in scorching heat, three hours they waited bound hand and feet.

Fear, Greed and Wonder on the Captain's Trail

If, according to Ryszard Kapuscinski, "the meaning of life is crossing borders" certain lessons were learned on the Captain's latest sojourn in the Americas. What exactly those nuggets of wisdom were, I still haven't figured out, but for sure it was an enlightening and engaging experience. From giving a speech in Spanish to three hundred Cubans, to attending a protest comprising of ten people outside Trump Towers, the journey was thought provoking to say the least. Like Dynamite Johnny's own voyage to Cuba, my travels were subsumed by larger events! While in N.Y. I was told by one enlightened individual "what Cuba needs is greed." Alas, I can't pin this statement to my own mast. But it seems this is what the U.S. wants, it is determined to infiltrate the regime in Cuba, and pin its own peculiar brand of freedom to the island. It has, as A Captain Unafraid interviewee Louis Perez says a long seated "obsessive compulsive disorder" when it comes to Cuba. And Cuba isn't the only country that the U.S. has attempted to extend its ethos, or failing that, control over. While giving an interview at NYU'S Gluckman's house at Washington Square Park I was given some interesting reading by my host Miriam Nyham. The book (which she edited) "America and the 1916 Rising" has a section that deals with the parallels between Cuba and Ireland and their fights for independence. Many commentators and politicians at the time referenced the Cuban revolution against Spain when speaking of possible U.S. support for Irish Independence, with some hoping for outright military intervention by the U.S. in Ireland "the time may come when the American government may find in Ireland as effective a means for intervention as she had found in Cuba." While this never happened, U.S. culture in all its varied qualities has certainly subsumed the island of Ireland these past 100 years. It has left a thick blanket of fog over the country, leaving us digging for nuggets of our own truth amongst the chaff. 

A Captain Unafraid still

Trump Towers

Speaking of the Irish presence in Cuba, I was put up by the Irish Embassy in "Hotel Palacio O' Farill" for the duration of the film festival. The "Palacio" is indeed palatial, O Farill is one of the old surnames of Havana, unfortunately, their palatial grandeur was achieved on the back of money from the slave trade. Strangely, the floor I was on was named Longford-both the O' Farill and "Dynamite" O' Brien's came from that county! The foremost expert on the Irish in Havana has to be Señor Rafael Fernandez Moya, a walking library on all matters to do with the Irish presence in that city. Here we are in Havana's "Biblioteca Pública Rubén Martinez" with a portrait of Juan Antonia Mella McPartland (founder of the Cuban Communist Party) between us. Mella's mother was from Ireland.

Señor Moya y yo, Biblioteca Pública Rubén Martinez

Another one of the many minds of information I met told me how Mella was involved in the first attempt to establish a socialist republic in Cuba. I've forgotten the name of the person I conversed with, but he wrote a screenplay with a title hard to forget-"The Red Rooster Sang and Dawn Didn't Rise."

In Old Havana there was an exhibition at the Rubén Martinez Library for the 100th anniversary of Dynamite Johnny's death. Organised in conjunction with some of the local schools, they screened the Captain there and used copies of the drawings of the animated segments as part of the exhibition. A program was organised for the kids called "Discovering my locality, Old Havana."

One morning in Cienfuegos, around halfway across our traversal of Cuba, we had coffee in the home of a farmer called Santiago O' Bourke.

Santiago O' Bourke, Cienfuegos

Santiago, the town, is on the far east of Cuba and is strongly influenced by its African heritage. One of our screenings was at An African Cultural Centre in the city. John McAuliff of the U.S. based "Fund for Reconciliation and Development" was the man behind taking the Captain to the provinces of Cuba.

Myself and John McAuliff, African Cultural Centre, Santiago

Santiago's Santa Ifigeniais Cemetery is the burial place of many's a Cuban hero, most famous of those being, José Martí and Fidel Castro. Cuba, like many a nation, venerates heroes of old as examples for the future, but in Cuba you get the feeling of the closeness of history much more so than in other countries. There is a changing of the guard every half hour at José Martí's grave, it is like he died a few months ago, or did he die atall! As he said himself los que no creen en la imortalidad creen en la historia, "those who don' believe in immortality, believe in history." When I first read this quote I didn't rightly understand it, but by the end of my trip its significance was blindingly clear-the past is the immensity that makes us, it cannot be escaped, and consequently it should be listened to and reflected upon. There José Martí remains in a palatial tomb next to Fidel, around the corner from Thomas Estrada Palma who named Johnny chief Havana Harbor pilot.

José Martí's tomb

I arrived home from my flight to the Americas just in time to gaze in wonder at the reams of U.S. flags unfurled for the 4th of July celebrations in Killarney. 

Talking to other Killarney natives, many were not happy with this exultation of U.S. nationalism in their town, in whispered tones they disagree, but are afraid to speak up. It looks like the 4th of July festival in Killarney is here to stay, though it began just two years ago, methinks it will be set in stone for a long time to come. Even now, it has the feeling that it has always been there. In the same way no-one believed Donald Trump could become president, or that Brexit would ever happen, we now accept these new worlds and deal with their consequences pragmatically. We forget a time they didn't exist. The trick here is to be very careful what we wish for. It has to be said, Killarney's Fourth Of July festival is a crass celebration of U.S. nationalism that is dangerous and blatant balderdash. Given how much war and power mongering the U.S. is and has been involved in, for a prominent town in a neutral country to be raising the U.S. flag alone over its town hall to the sound of the star spangled banner, is ominous as well as being offensive. And I love many, many things about the U.S., but following them down a rabbit hole in my own country to some sad exultation of imperialism, consumerism and trash culture is not something I can support. I was reminded, upon my own recent return to my native land, of the poem by Bonifacio Byrne called Mi Bandera or "My Flag." Byrne came back to Cuba from the U.S. in 1898 and saw to his dismay the U.S. flag flying next to his own. He composed these verses inspired by that ominous vision. 

Upon returning from a distant shore,
Weary of heart and somber,
I searched for my flag anxiously
And saw another flying beside her.

This morning I looked for my flag,
The most beautiful flag in the world;
From the ship's deck, I surveyed the skies
And have never seen anything sadder.

With the faith of an austere soul,
In this conviction I have grown
That two flags should not be flown
When one is enough: my own!

In fields that have been turned to boneyards,
She saw the struggles of the brave,
And she has been the winding-sheet
Of warriors who lie in the grave.

She proudly held her own in battle,
Without puerile or romantic praise:
The Cuban who doesn't believe in her
Should be branded a coward always!

From the depths of the darkest prison,
She heard not a word of woe;
In other lands she was the beacon
That led our footsteps in the snow...

Don't you see her? My flag is the one
That never has mercenary flown,
In whose field there shines a star
All more brightly for being alone!

I've brought her in my soul from exile
Amongst my memories of home,
And I have rendered her homage
By raising her aloft in my poem.

Though listless now and sadly drooping,
I hope some day the sun's pure light
Will shine on her — on her alone! —
On land and sea and mountain height.

If my flag were torn to pieces
Those who died to make her free
Would raise their arms together
And fight eternally!