Flying Column - Boolavogue!

Flying Column ~ Boolavogue / Requiem for the Croppies

There are so many fascinating back stories here about both pieces that you would need pages to go in to them. Boolavogue was written by Patrick Joseph McCall in 1898, the one hundredth anniversary of the 1798 Rebellion and Requiem for the Croppies was written in 1966 the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Rising. The recording here is by the Flying Column a Belfast folk group and was also the name given to the Active Service Units during the Irish War of Independence. Most of the fighting of 1798 was in Wexford and eastern Ulster but also in County Meath. The last stand perhaps of the Wexford army was at Knightstown Bog in County Meath on the 14th of July and their story is told in Eamon Doyle's book 'The March Into Meath' published in 2011 and well worth the read. The French landing in Killala in north Mayo in August by one thousand French troops would be too late but their engagement with General Lake at Castlebar is forever known as 'The Races'. The French and their Irish contingents were defeated at Ballinamuck in Longford on the 8th of September with the French taken as prisoners of war and the Irish massacred. There would be something of a strange coincidence at New Orleans in 1815 but that's another story. But if you're ever driving through Killucan ...