Jackets Green facts for kids

The song revolved around Donal, a soldier fighting under Patrick Sarsfield.

Jackets Green is an Irish ballad by Michael Scanlan (1833–1917) concerning an Irish woman and her beloved, an Irish soldier fighting in the Jacobite army of Patrick Sarsfield during the Williamite War of the late 17th century. Like some other "patriotic" Irish ballads, it includes romantic rather than historically accurate descriptions. This includes, at its core, the assertion that Sarsfield's men wore green uniforms, when the Irish Brigade, initiated by the Jacobite soldiers under Sarsfield's command, actually wore red uniforms.

Background

During the Williamite War in Ireland, the French and Irish troops fighting for James II of England and VII of Scotland had fought their way back to Limerick. Here, the French leader Lauzun declined to defend the city against the pursuing Williamites, saying it could be taken "with rotten apples". He led his troops to Galway and returned to France.

Sarsfield, however, believed the city could be defended. When a Williamite deserter gave information that King William and his officers had ridden forward ahead of their ammunition train and were waiting for it, Sarsfield led a raiding party, led by the rapparee Galloping Hogan, through the Silvermine Mountains. One of Sarsfield's men fell behind when his horse lost a shoe, and spoke with a woman also walking; she was the wife of a Williamite soldier on the way to meet her man, and told him that the Williamites' password was "Sarsfield". The Jacobites used the password to get into the camp - Sarsfield himself shouting "Sarsfield's the word, and Sarsfield's the man!" and they captured 150 wagons of ammunition, approximately 30 cannons and mortars, plus 12 wagons of provisions, all of which they blew up.

The result of Sarsfield's ride was that William of Orange's siege of Limerick failed after a fortnight, and the king sailed back to England. However, the hero of the song, Donal, a soldier in Sarsfield's Jacobite army, is killed at Garryowen, an area within Limerick's walls, during the siege. The song calls on all Irish women to love only those who "wear the jackets green".

This reference to "jackets green" is a romantic delusion as Sarsfield's Irish Brigades wore red uniforms, in part because they considered themselves to be the true British army, supporters of the Catholic James Francis Edward Stuart, rather than the Protestant William III.

Sarsfield and his defence of Limerick are a touchstone of Irish national feeling, and the song by a Limerick-born poet who emigrated to Chicago was popular among supporters of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

The song, described as "imaginative historical romance", was written by Michael Scanlan who had emigrated from Ireland to the United States in the 1840s.