The folklore con cerning Gearoid continued to spread. During the 15th century, London grew nervous about the growing power of the Desmond earls. Despite continued challenges to their rule the Fitzgeralds maintained control as their prestige throughout Europe grew. The Gherardini, a leading Florentine family, claimed they were related. But tension continued to mount in the early16th century as rumors spread that the Fitzgeralds were plotting to invade and seize London's power.
For over four hundred years the Fitzgeralds were absorbed into the local mythology. Then in 1558, the 14th Earl of Desmond succeeded to the title. His name was Gerald, the first to have that name since Gearoid Iarla. The English had deprived Gerald of his family estates by locking him up in London Tower for long periods of time. Rather than breaking his will, when Gerald returned home in 1573, he took on a stronger pro-Irish stance by joining the rebellion against the English. Hopes ran high for the Fitzgerald campaign as the prophecies were circulated. In later folklore it was claimed that the new Gearoid embodied the great Fitzgerald spirit of his 14th-century ancestor. Gearoid Iarla had not died but returned at the hour of the family's greatest need.
It is said that a man passing by Lough Gur saw a light and found the entrance to a cavern, where he saw an army of knights and horses asleep. There was a sword on the floor, and as the man drew it out the army awakened. Then its leader, Gearoid Iarla, asked if the time had come yet, but the man ran away. The army fell back to sleep, and the entrance could not be found later.
Although Gerald was an inspiration, by 1583 his cause was lost and he was beheaded. The great affection for the family lived on, as did the hope that one of them would someday free Ireland. There are repeated references to this mystical belief in documents from the 17th to the 19th centuries as well as London's concern for the Fitzgerald's embrace of Gaelic ways in clear defiance of English law.
Despite London's fierce opposition, Gearoid Iarla and the myths surrounding him would continue to inspire future Fitzgeralds while winning the admiration of the Irish people. But as the power of these myths became entwined with Ireland's political history London found itself justifying a genocide to eliminate an existential threat to London's rule far beyond mere competition. To the royals, siding with the "people" over loyalty to the Crown was the highest treason of all. That revelation made clear why the marriage of first Fitzgerald, Gerald of Winsor to Princess Nest in 1097, would inevitably lead to the killing of JFK in 1963 for his attempt to bring peace to the world.
Our HAIR experience and why its music still matters
We had done research for an article on mind control that included the role of MK-ULTRA; a CIA project that operated from the early 1950s through the 1960s. MK-ULTRA had used Americans without consent to alter their mental states. The project remained secret until 1975 when the Church Committee Hearings revealed the CIA's illegal activities. But what really got our attention back then was confirming that MK-ULTRA had infiltrated the Anti-Vietnam War Movement to undermine its legitimacy with the distribution of psychedelic drugs.
As teenagers growing up in the1960s the music scene and the antiwar movement were synonymous. A new age was dawning and our generation wanted to keep war from becoming part of it. What we didn't know until recently was how much influence military intelligence and the CIA had in forming what we believed was an organic outgrowth of popular sentiment against the Vietnam War.
Before bands such as The Doors and The Byrds became famous; the songwriters, musicians and singers who would form those bands flocked to Laurel Canyon. What was strange about this migration was the absence of a music industry in the area. What it did have was Vito Paulekas and the Freaks; a regular feature of the Sunset Boulevard Club scene starting in 1964. Paulekas was known for supplying wildly frenzied dancers to stir interest in the bands and is credited with their early success. Having materialized a musical revolution out of thin air, he has also been credited as the inspiration for the Hippie movement's fashion and free-love communal lifestyle.
Another oddity was that many of the artists who arrived were descended from influential families, had military or intelligence backgrounds or connections to high-ranking military personnel. Frank Zappa, creator of The Mothers of Invention, spent his youth at the Edgewood Arsenal Chemical Biological Center where his father was a chemical-warfare specialist. Edgewood Arsenal was connected to MK-Ultra's mind-control program. Major Floyd Crosby, father of David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash, was an Annapolis graduate and WWII military intelligence officer descended from the Van Rensselaers, a prominent American family.
Doors Keyboardist Ray Manzarek served in the highly selective Army Security Agency as an intelligence analyst in Laos in the run-up to the Vietnam War. Doors producer Paul Rothchild also served in the same Military Intelligence Corps in 1959. Jim Morrison was the son of U.S. Navy Admiral George Morrison.
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