Well, O'Loingsigh (even Longseach) which means mariner, is one of the old Irish spelling of the Anglicized Lynch. My family all goes by Lynch (Brooklyn, NY via Coolmeen/Kildysart/Ennis, County Clare). As a writer of fiction, I wanted to conjure the ancient while writing in the present, so I made it Loingsigh. I am not the biggest fan of the Anglo, Anglo-Saxon. I feel closer to the history of the Celts who were invaded by Julius Ceaser (see Vercingetorix) and were exiled from the European mainland to the Western most island of Ireland. In the 1840s, after having their language and culture made illegal by foreigners, they were pushed out even further into the water to the coffin ships, if not the ditches and boreens, with the life starved from them. Yet we still survive, don't we? You know that we do! 

My book, the first in a trilogy, called "Light of the Diddicoy," is about a 14 year old Irish immigrant in 1915 who is forced to join the White Hand Gang along the docks of Brooklyn in order to make enough money to get his mother and two sisters out of the countryside of Ireland after the Easter Rising and the coming War of Independence and Civil War, is due out March 17, 2014. That's St. Paddy's Day, of course. 

Thanks so much for welcoming me. I've been a close Wild Geese fan for a couple years and have followed the site closely. Now that my publisher is requesting me to come out from behind the closet, I figured I'd make my way onto the site's radar. 

Eamon Loingsigh

I did read Dr. Fisher's account. Also read Nathan Ward's "Dark Harbor," which had maybe more to do with Malcolm Johnson's reporting that earned him the Pulitzer for journalism and helped bring down an Irish-American NYC mayor (O'Dwyer) in the process. All of this was required reading for me. Studying, really. 

Hell's Kitchen was a tough area. TJ English is the master of that area. I'm sure you know TJ and his book "The Westies." I'd be very interested in hearing how your family ran afoul of the law. Family secrets are always the funnest to hear! 

As for my family, they lived in Brooklyn, but when they got off the boat, they stayed originally on Bank Street in Manhattan. From 1906 to the late 1970s, my great-grandfather and grandfather ran a longshoreman's saloon at 368 Hudson St. in Greenwich Village (yes, they traveled across the bridges for all those years, every day). As many saloons had done during those years, money was gathered in jars on the bar or from events of the various clubs they were involved in (Owen Roe, John Mitchell or the very long winded County Claremen's Evicted Tenants Collective and Industrial Association, for which my great-grandfather was treasurer)... anyhow, the money they earned was sent back to Ireland for the cause of freedom, I'm very proud to say.

How can I promote and share my work here? I'd love it!  

Eamon