Our final event of the year, in the comfortable surroundings of The Three Fiddles Irish bar, followed a 5,000 year old tradition in Ireland of celebrating the winter Solstice (An Grianstad). One of the goals we set ourselves was to speculate on who may have been responsible for constructing the world-renowned solstice determinator of Newgrange. we did this by exploring the ancient legends of the first peoples who landed on our shores (as per the Lebor Gabala). We then examined a more recent legend, passed down over some 400 years, that one of our members was descended directly from the Norman-Irish knight who slew Generalissimo Wallenstein in the Czech border town of Cheb/Eger in 1634, and, finally after much discussion on both sets of legends we reviewed the success of our programme over the year and looked ahead to continuing into 2025.


To unpick truth from mythology we started by reviewing the only evidence surviving after all those years, which are the stone tombs resulting from diverse burial rites practiced by each group. The legendary ancestors (dismissing two earlier ficticious creations added by the early monks for religious purposes) were, chronologically, Clanna Neimhid, (the Nemedians) Na Fir Bolg (literally the bag men), Tuatha Dé Danainn (the tribe of Dana) and Clanna Míle (the Milesians). The tomb types, again in chronological order, were cist burials with stone cairns, court tombs, passage graves, and wedge and portal tombs. The latter two types were commensurate with the Milesians who arrived from Spain in the early bronze age. All, with the exception of the passage tombs, were oriented along specific lines, whether eastwards, south westwards, etc. The passage tombs seemed to have no particular orientation to any one specific point, but instead have been found, like Newgrange, to be oriented to correspond to certain times of year, i.e. the eight ancient divisions of Imbolc (1st February), Bealtaine (1st May), Lughnasadh (1st August), Samhain (1st November), and of course the summer and winter solstices and the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. Those ancient calendrical markers are still recorded by various passage mounds and are celebrated in Ireland to the present day. The legends speak of a race of aristocratic magicians (scientists?), the Tuatha Dé as the ones who designed Newgrange and the other mystical mounds and the archaeological evidence tends to support this. See the appendix for fuller details.


We continued our examination of the truth of ancient legends with the more recent story of Czech artist Josef Ryzec, whose family tradition down through the years was to the effect that the Ryzec’s were descended from an Irish soldier. This legend, passed down over nearly 400 years, led Josef to undertake some colossal historical research to establish the identity of this soldier. He has now written up the results and established conclusively that he is descended directly from Walter Devereux, a Norman-Irish knight fighting for the Austrian emperor during the 30 Years War (1618-1648) who assassinated the treacherous Generalissimo Wallenstein in Eger/Cheb in 1634 and who subsequently settled in the Czech lands. The Wild Geese Society hope to publish Josef’s remarkable detective story in conjunction with the Czech-Irish Business and Cultural Association (CIBCA) on St Patrick’s Day 2025. The members present however expressed their impatience and sought a draft copy in the interim, and this was promised!


The review of the outgoing year concluded that it had been a success and that an interesting mix of events was achieved. The Society is perhaps unique in that it functions without a committee, and does not charge for participation. It relies on interested members to propose and organise appropriate events and owes much to those who stepped up. We are hoping to repeat the experiment in the New Year! So, take flight with us!