The Blood-red Rose of Ireland
The Blood-red Rose of Ireland
An(other) interview with Michael Yon, American soldier, friend of Ireland
Ireland in Extremis
An interview with Michael Yon
You live in a country all your life, loving her, cherishing her, beholding her. She is yours — not a possession, but a ‘belonging.’ She belongs to you, having been won in the blood of your ancestors, whose blood soaks her earth, her stones and her turf banks. You belong to her, having been born between her mountains. You shall not die unless she dies, and she will not die.
O, my Dark Rosaleen,
Do not sigh, do not weep!
The priests are on the ocean green,
They march along the Deep.
There’s wine from the royal Pope,
Upon the ocean green;
And Spanish ale shall give you hope,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope,
Shall give you health, and help, and hope,
My Dark Rosaleen!
Crouched coughing in the night, a child close to a terminal breathlessness, I feel her near. She is awake, listening. Her strength rises up underneath me until it is more powerful than the coughing. In the delirium of the fever, her arms — roots? branches? — envelop and hold me, resolute against the convulsions. I feel her every heartbeat. She is my mother, the One above the one. Nothing can overcome me for she is mine. She stands guard while I sleep. She will be waiting for me to awaken. She needs no sleep. Her heart knows no fear, for she is mightier than all the gods in the firmament. She has lived through the griefs of the aeons, and remains. Her heartbeat tells me that I shall not die, for she has not died. She is immortal, and with her I am immortal. Though I walk through the valley of darkness, no evil can I imagine. Though I cough to the point of oblivion, death will never consume me. She is there in the dark, breathing out the rhythm of life from lungs made on the anvil of Heaven.
Éire is her name. Éiriu is her name. Róisín is her name. Rosaleen is her name.
Róisín Dubh: My black little Rose. My dark Rosaleen.
You have loved her always, before the first conscious thought. You have loved her above all persons, have loved all persons afterwards in the tongue of that love, a love that happens beyond words. This love is heartbeat. This love is thunder. This love is a lightening flash. This love is rain on the roof. This love is a lone dog barking in the distant night, louder than the cough: there is life beyond pain.
This love is Ireland, her other name.
Ireland: a land without end. A love without finality. Or so we thought.
But what if this love was a love felt only by you, by me, a private thing, unique, a thing that, because it had no mode of clear expression, could not be shared, could not be verified, other than through occasional bursts of words fashioned by madmen, and therefore might well die of neglect born of this ignorance? Pity the land not in need of poets.
What if you awoke one morning and the heartbeat had weakened almost to the point of extinction? What if no one anymore shared the love of Éiriu, of Róisín Dubh, of Dark Rosaleen? What if the very idea of such a love had become old-fashioned, infra dig, extinct among those who, without knowing it, depended on it for their lives and their futures?
All day long, in unrest,
To and fro, do I move.
The very soul within my breast
Is wasted for you, love!
The hearing in my bosom faints
To think of you, my Queen.
My life of life, my saint of saints,
My Dark Rosaleen!
The darkness gathers to the east and the song grows darker too.
Woe and pain,
Pain and woe,
Are my lot, night and noon,
To see your bright face clouded so,
Like to the mouthful moon.
But yet will I rear your throne
Again to golden sheen.
’Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone,
My Dark Rosaleen!
Observing the gathering clouds, you try to respond in a way that might return things to their former state, but almost no one seems to sense the danger, see the problem, care about the consequences. Ireland just is, they seem to think. It can be everything we want without being anything of itself. It is a blank sheet on which to write nonsense and filth.
But no. Ireland depends on our love for her, now and forever, as it always has been and always will be, world without end.
What if this love had been a figment of the imagination only? My imagination and yours? And what was imagination anyway? Fantasy? Dreaming? Of what use are they in buttering parsnips?
What if my memory is playing tricks? What if the words of that love weaved a spell that could not be shared, and therefore might be mine alone, I who, being old, lack the strength to fight and save my dark Róisín?
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
What if the poets were all dead, marooned in the past, and so the words no longer came as once they had, and so the earth and stone and black sods of Éire became merely the stuff upon which we walked across the sand bank, tiled and concreted for our additional comfort? Why the need for strong feelings for muck and dirt?
What would happen then? After an appropriate juncture, who knows. Unfamiliar ordinances? Bulletins of lies? Troup-movements in the night? Boxes with knives or guns, delivered by daylight? Strange, dark men marching in the fields of mist. learning their first words of Irish: Luigh amach! Clé iompaig! Ar aghaidh! Outsiders without visible purpose, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And still the people sleep, unstirred by fear or coughing fits.
The demons creeping in through the night like a virus and infecting the breast that once beat with a single love, now inexpressible, because unshared, because forbidden.
The proxies have landed, the servants of the true evil ones, who have never been to the land so loved its manhood once lined up to die smiling so as to repeat to the pointing rifles: Róisin will never die. I shall happily die, for Ireland will never die.
I could scale the blue air,
I could plough the high hills,
Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer,
To heal your many ills!
And one beamy smile from you
Would float like light between
My toils and me, my own, my true,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My fond Rosaleen!
Would give me life and soul anew,
A second life, a soul anew,
My Dark Rosaleen!
But now the word goes out, a snide word spoken from the side of a clown mouth: Ireland is dying and it doesn’t matter. The island will have people, black or brown of them — who cares?
So what, so long as the economy prospers, eh?
Invaded from within by an insurgency of stupidity and greed, Ireland is as though no longer recognisable from the inside. No one seems to recall the face of Róisín, or her history. No one seems to care. The poets — the true poets — have died and left us wordless, and the virus of wickedness comes for Éiriu.
It seems impossible that she might die, never again to stride the oceans of the world bringing words and thoughts of transcendence, and yet the evidence piles high and becomes unanswerable: Rosaleen might not make it through.
The leaders of our people are busily orchestrating the despatch of our people. They have offered themselves as the agents of the new and self-ordained landlord who seek to clear the land of its inconvenient human collateral. At a gathering of farmers during an election, a farming scribe asks me, ‘How much money are you going to put in the pockets of farmers?’ I am tempted to say, ‘Thirty pieces of silver apiece!,’ but I, being in that moment also excessively pragmatic, refrain.
The gravediggers are on overtime, The graveyards are being filled with the bodies of the old and the young, and the people walk by the gates whistling alien ditties.
The land is being replanted, though spring is long gone, by the gombeens screaming their ‘compassion; and ‘humanity’ to the four winds. Leering outsiders with dark faces say they have come to take our country and we had better keep our mouths shut or it will be the worse for us. They come from ‘war zones’ they say, but when asked about the women and children they have abandoned there, they fall into harmony with the pervading official silence.
Our menfolk are preoccupied by banter and diversion, as though the claims of ‘conspiracy theories!’ were sufficient to calm all fears. Words have no meanings for them, except the meanings approved by those who have sought to abort all meaning, and mean soon to abort the future generations of Irish children before they may utter a single poem or cough.
The Unspeakable Creeps of the Regime, incapable of love — these oily hangmen of the Club of Treason, with the lying scribes who do their bidding — are uncomprehending of their crimes. What is in it for them? The question is incomprehensible to their ears, a puzzle for bystanders. They do not think beyond tomorrow’s haul of silver.
The town criers have fallen silent. The sentries at their posts have disabled themselves with Soma, lest they be required to hear or see what is happening, the dead God forbid that they be called upon to act in defence of their people or their homeland.
There is no help within. The police, in high heels, have been bought or replaced, the army hired out to foreign wars.
The national imagination has been buried at a crossroads so as to deny the writ of crossroads or dancing or comeliness. Our womenfolk, the daughters of Róisín, are so obsessed with a false concept of their unfreedom that they do not notice the clamour of tanks coming past their windows.
The poets are merely versifiers, contriving dissociated screeds for application to foreign paper, haiku of self-hatred or misplaced humanitarianism.
Over dews, over sands,
Will I fly, for your weal;
your holy delicate white hands
Shall girdle me with steel.
At home, in your emerald bower.
From morning’s dawn till e’en,
You’ll pray for me, my flower of flowers,
My Dark Rosaleen!
None but a tiny few hears the cries of Róisín as she is bound and gagged, raped and spat upon by those who have been promised their share of her abundance, in return for delivering her to those who have leveraged their victimhood as a weapon of plunder.
Our country has been handed over as winnings to gamblers at the tables of illegal casinos, and now they are impatient to collect.
Éiriu is dying. No one loves her, not enough, or with an ersatz love expressed in the hollow words of politicians, without meaning or memory, impotent before the evil that assails her. The thieves come by night and day, each one more assured in his striding and denouncing and demanding.
I could scale the blue air,
I could plough the high hills,
Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer,
To heal your many ills!
And one beamy smile from you
Would float like light between
My toils and me, my own, my true,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My fond Rosaleen!
Would give me life and soul anew,
A second life, a soul anew,
My Dark Rosaleen!
Ireland is dying. Ireland is being murdered by the silence of her sons and daughters, in harmony with the evil of a rancid political system turned rogue as though born for wickedness. They are fearless now, but only in their treachery and purchased loyalty. In truth, they are afraid to the cores of their beings, and so they think to kill their country rather than stand on a truth or a principle or a loyalty. They know no truths, for they have shattered them into tiny pieces. They know no principles, for those are mere legends of mad poets and princes. They know no loyalty, for no one was ever loyal to them in the cesspit they have chosen.
O! the Erne shall run red
With abundance of blood,
The earth shall rock beneath our tread,
And flames wrap hill and wood,
And gun-peal, and slogan cry,
Wake many a glen serene,
Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
The Judgment Hour must first be nigh,
Ere you can fade, ere you can die,
My Dark Rosaleen!
Unlike in the poem, in reality we await no deliveries of Roman wine or Spanish ale, or Russian vodka for that matter. There is no one outside who will come to alleviate our fears or pain. We are cast unto our wits and our strengths in a world ridden with similar corruption.
In the past 54 months, some among of us who had been naïve in our apprehension of political reality encountered a rude awakening. We realised that those we had elected to represent us in the management of our country were traitors, more or less every one. When the arch-tyrants among them stepped up to seize control of State institutions and the attendant powers of coercion and restriction, on behalf of external (pay)masters, the others said nothing, or next to nothing, mostly confining themselves to criticising those among the People who spoke or acted as if this might be one of the worst things that ever happened. In the months that followed, these same despots mounted an assault on the elderly in care to bump up the mortality figures and so persuade the public that a ‘pandemic’ was afoot. They subsequently presided over the quasi-mandatory injection of the population with a poisonous substance which cured nothing but killed and injured its recipients in numbers never before seen for such a claimed substance.
We ought not be surprised by anything these people would do to us now, what they might orchestrate against us, what crimes they might commit to cover up their past ones, to save their own skins or inflate their own bank balances. They are not our leaders or our friends; they are our enemies, all of them. They are no sons of Róisín, and therefore not our brothers.
I search the world for brothers and sisters, for like-minded people. I have found one whose understandings match both mine and what I observe to be happening. He claims to be an American, and I am inclined to believe him, but he is an American from a different time, when America corporate cared about freedom. He was a soldier and remains one. He nods when I tell him what is happening. He remembers what this means.
His name is Michael Yon. He anticipates me in everything. He knows who I am. He does not ask me why this matters to me. He does not argue, except when I fail to fully understand. He is unsurprised by what I tell him and by my responses to it. He is a son of Éiriu, born abroad.
The latest fearsome news
An alarming communication was released last week in a social media post by Graham dePenros, who is not known to me. I take its content with a high degree of seriousness, because it resonates with claims made by Michael Yon in our last conversation on these topics, on July 27th.
The post stated inter alia:
Over the past six weeks, unexplained deliveries have raised alarms within the Irish Defence Forces. A mix of 40-foot high cube containers and 20-foot containers have been delivered to multiple military installations across the Republic of Ireland, including prominent sites such as Collins Barracks in Cork, the Haulbowline Naval Base, The Curragh Camp, and several other strategic locations. The contents of these containers remain unknown, guarded, and shrouded in secrecy. Deviation from Standard Military Protocol for such deliveries typically involves a modest security detail of two soldiers per container. However, in these unprecedented cases, each container is guarded by a contingent of eight soldiers, indicating an elevated security concern of significant importance.
No Paperwork
Compounding the mystery, the containers lack any Bills of Lading, manifests, or documentation that would trace their arrival through official channels. There are no records of these containers passing through any Irish port or manifests lodged with port authorities.
The containers are sealed with specialized locks that trigger alarms if tampered with, and each is fitted with CCTV systems. Disturbingly, no member of the Defence Forces appears to have access to the CCTV feeds or knows from where they are being monitored. This opaque operational oversight raises troubling questions about who controls these highly guarded assets within Ireland’s sovereign military facilities.
Threat of Court-Martial
Senior Defence Forces personnel have voiced concerns about the containers, only to be met with strict warnings to cease all inquiries under the threat of court-martial. This chilling response suggests a level of external control or influence that undermines the chain of command and disrupts the transparency and accountability expected within any democratic military structure.
List of Locations
The list of affected locations reads like a roll call of Ireland’s critical military assets: Collins Barracks, Kilworth Camp, Haulbowline Naval Base, Finner Camp, Cathal Brugha Barracks, McKee Barracks, Renmore Barracks, The Curragh Camp, Stephen's Barracks, Sarsfield Barracks, Aiken Barracks, Gormanstown Camp, and Custume Barracks. The broad distribution of these containers suggests a coordinated effort that is strategically significant yet veiled in an impenetrable cloak of secrecy.
My response to this post
The bulletin by Graham dePenros resonates alarmingly with a scenario spelt out by the former American special services member, Michael Yon, who on June 19th issued a warning based on information gleaned directly on a trip he made to Ireland in 2022, and indirectly from research recently provided to him by a person with a military background here in Ireland.
Michael’s post of June 19th was devoted to what he described as the planned ‘invasion’ of my country, Ireland, using the enormous battalion of indifferent male aliens, unlawfully brought into our country by our appalling Government, and now residing here, chiefly in camps dotted around the country, albeit anything but randomly, according to Michael. The picture he painted was bleak indeed: that, as in other parts of the West, the recent influxes of outsiders — mostly males between the ages of 25 and 35 — amounts to a stealth-invasion of our country, with a view to its capture and the eradication and/or replacement of its indigenous population.
He outlined in detail the research he had acquired, which pinpointed a total of 36 military-style encampments in the area of Dublin County, and 293 more in the rest of the Republic, accommodating about 120,000 alien males. He pointed out that the locations of these facilities in the vicinity of Dublin were clearly such as to render it easy to block off the main entry and exit points of the city, with the design of the M50 as a ‘manmade obstacle’ also facilitating the sealing off of the capital from the rest of the country and blocking access and egress.
I reposted this warning on my Substack in mid-July, and a fortnight later, having tracked Michael down, interviewed him about his investigations and hypothesis.
This follow-up interview, conducted on Saturday, September 14th, arose from the publication of the above details of containers being delivered to army bases around Ireland, a scenario loosely predicted by Michael in his June 19th post and in our interview of July 27th
Michael Yon
Michael Yon is a former member of the special operation forces of the US army, otherwise known as the ‘Green Berets’. At age 19, he successfully completed his Green Beret training, and his subsequent experience in this regiment taught him the art of observing and surviving in the most dangerous environments on earth. In the mid-1990s, he became a writer, photographer and investigator, and has for many years provided detailed reconnaissance from the front lines of global conflicts all over the world. Combining his skills as writer and photographer, and with the encouragement of fellow veterans, Michael began his career as a war correspondent by travelling to Iraq in December, 2004. He has since, on numerous occasions, been embedded with American and British troops in Iraq, initially in a deployment with the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division, in Mosul, which ended in September, 2005. He went on to cover some of the world's most complex conflicts and war zones, travelling to more than 80 countries, including China, India, Bhutan and Vietnam. Most recently, he's been in South America covering the massive influx of migrants into the United States via the Darién Gap, an until recently unreported path for illegal immigration into America.
* This impassioned song, entitled, in the original, Roisin Duh, or The Black Little Rose, was written in the reign of Elizabeth by one of the poets of the celebrated Tirconnellian chieftain, Hugh the Red O’Donnell. It purports to be an allegorical address from Hugh to Ireland on the subject of his love and struggles for her, and his resolve to raise her again to the glorious position she held as a nation before the irruption of the Saxons and the Normans.
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On a related theme . . .
‘For What Died the Sons of Róisín?’
(In the Voice of Luke Kelly)