Miles Plans Expedition to Ireland – Wanderings of the Gael
One of a series of poems drawn from the Taking of Ireland, exploring the thesems and theories of the modern day of our origions, and personalising it with family legends of ours!
Miles, leader of soldiers, fought for Pharaoh Nectonibus
Brave as if his son, against Ethiopian armies, risked his life,
Pharaoh grateful, knowing a wise leader and a brave man,
Honoured the widower for marriage his daughter as a wife.
No stranger among Egyptians, among them lived for eight years,
Sent some of his people to the folk of skills their trades to learn
So that when Egypt they left and they reached their destination
Their skills they would employ and all their folk benefit from earn.
He arrived back there to his kingdom Spain, where then lived his people
Among unrest and war with those peoples who lived there before
Also the arrival of some fierce new foreigners armies…
Routed all in battles fought bravely, numbered fifty, and four!
For another twenty six long years, one after the other,
Scorched land it was parched dry, little water, the people they there starved
Worried king, who prayed long to the Gods, looked helplessly on his people
Buried their dead, those alive as flesh to the bone, the hunger carved.
The king, he pondered, being a great thinker, a man of knowledge,
Thought that the Gods they were wild angry and he knew they knew best,
Wanted to drive him and his people back to their boats on the wild seas
To resume on the rough waves for the Promised Isle, their quest.
The ancient prophesy of the Druid Cachear, he remembered,
He, once set on a quest never was known to shirk or to fail,
These folk of the sea under their king they assembled a new fleet
As feet on waves to the unknown in adventure set sail.
As fleets sailed west seeking the fair isle did wild winds scatter them?
Did some said east wash up on the shores of the land of Gaul?
Later reach Ireland as Clan Eoghanchta, last arrivals?
Did more scattered west from the mainfleet on Scotland make landfall?
Could this be how Kennedy is of Munster, also of Ayr
Where to the wild winds of the Atlantic their castle today stands
Before they came then with the English to the fields of Ulster
Where they vie today with the Gael for the control of those lands?
GLOSSARY
* “Cachear” – Druid who foretold of landing on a promised isle, for which they must search
* Nectonibus – Pharoh, who gave his daughter Scota in marraige to the widower Miles