This poem is dense with allusions to Irish history, particularly to groups and individuals from the history of Ireland associated with Irish nationalism, patriotism, and independence struggles. Yeats wrote "September 1913" at a pivotal time in modern Irish history. Though the poem condemns the complacency of the Irish people, it would, in fact, be just a little more than a decade after 1913 that an Irish independent state was finally established. Here, Yeats connects that twentieth-century aim with centuries worth of previous fighting for independence from British rule. The experience of reading the poem is enriched, therefore, through an understanding of Yeats's historical allusions—to John O'Leary, the three named heroes of a 1798 uprising against the crown, and to the metaphorical "wild geese." Here, we will break down the historical context of each of these allusions.
John O'Leary is a central figure in this poem, mentioned in the refrain that repeats at the end of each of the work's stanzas. O'Leary, relative to the other people to whom Yeats alludes, was drawn from more recent history—in fact, Yeats personally knew O'Leary. An Irish separatist, O'Leary was born into a comfortable Catholic family in Tipperary, but became radicalized by the writings of Thomas Davis, the nineteenth-century Irish writer who founded the nationalist paper The Nation. He joined the group known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, eventually rising to a position of leadership within the organization. However, this period of his life and activism was cut short in 1866, when he was arrested and charged with treason. While O'Leary was sentenced to twenty years in prison, he was permitted to wait out his sentence in exile abroad. Only in 1885 did he return to Ireland—and meet Yeats himself. O'Leary had an enormous influence on Yeats, encouraging him to explore Irishness in his own writing. Yeats credited O'Leary with prodding him towards an interest in Irish language and lore, which would, in turn, become trademarks of Yeats's legacy. Both men were interested in creating not merely an Irish state, but also an Irish Romantic movement, oriented around an embrace of the nation's folk culture, myth, and language. O'Leary died in 1907, seemingly without having had much success in his life—the specific strain of Irish separatism that he practiced and advocated for, embodied by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, had dwindled, causing Yeats to lament in "September 1913" that "Romantic Ireland" was "with O'Leary in the grave."
While Yeats was influenced by O'Leary, O'Leary had in turn been influenced by the previous generation's Irish rebels and nationalists. These included not only Thomas Davis, but also the three men mentioned by Yeats in this poem's third stanza: Edward Fitzgerald, Robert Emmet, and Theobald Wolfe Tone. Indeed, following O'Leary's return from exile, he worked on a project to re-publish Tone's writing, along with that of other Irish political thinkers. Fitzgerald, Emmet, and Tone were linked to an eighteenth-century separatist group called the United Irishmen. The group organized a 1798 rebellion against British rule. Inspired by the recent French Revolution, with its successful ousting of the monarchy, the United Irishmen sought to establish an independent state. They also aimed to create a unified Ireland across religious lines, composed of both Catholics and Protestants. The rebellion was unsuccessful. British forces attempted to arrest Fitzgerald, who held the highest leadership position of the three within the United Irishmen, prior to the start of the planned uprising. During his arrest, he was shot and killed. Tone, who had already spent a period exiled in the United States and France, was captured at sea and sentenced to death. He committed suicide in prison before his execution took place. Emmet, meanwhile, did not hold a leadership position in the United Irishmen, though his older brother did. He continued to support nationalist causes in the wake of the 1798 rebellion before launching his own uprising in 1803. He was captured and executed shortly thereafter.
Meanwhile, Yeats's allusion to "wild geese" might at first glance not appear to be an allusion at all. The poem's evocative description of the birds fleeing over the tide, after all, suggests that they are merely a metaphorical representation of Irishness in exile. However, the wild geese described here have a dual purpose, simultaneously serving as a vivid metaphor and as a reference to Irish history. Most narrowly, "wild geese" is the term colloquially used to refer to Irish Catholic soldiers who, following the 1691 Treaty of Limerick, left Ireland for the continent. The Treaty of Limerick ended a war between Jacobite and Williamite forces—that is, those who supported the Protestant William of Orange and those who supported the Catholic King James II. Following the treaty, many Jacobite soldiers chose to continue fighting on James II's behalf, not in Ireland but in the armies of countries allied with the Jacobite cause—primarily France. This exodus of soldiers is known as the "Flight of the Wild Geese," but well after the Treaty of Limerick, large numbers of Irish men left to fight in the militaries of eighteenth-century European powers, or else to seek economic opportunity abroad. Slightly more broadly, "wild geese" can refer not solely to the soldiers who fled following the Treaty of Limerick, but to their successors in the following decades.
By knitting together this range of allusions in "September 1913," Yeats paints a picture of a painful heritage—one oriented not around Ireland itself, but instead around alienation and exile from Ireland. He also counters those who might celebrate older fighters for Irish independence, such as the wild geese, while denigrating more recent ones, like John O'Leary. By linking these varied figures together with the shared themes of exile and Irish patriotism, Yeats makes the argument that by abandoning the modern fight for Irish nationhood, and by ignoring individuals like O'Leary, Ireland's middle classes are in fact betraying centuries worth of national heroes.
