Roger Casement - Legacy - Song, Story and Verse

Song, Story and Verse

Casement was also the subject of ballads and poetry in Ireland in the wake of his death, including:

• The ballad "Lonely Banna Strand" tells the story of Casement's role in the prelude to the Easter Rising, his arrest, and subsequent execution.
• Arthur Conan Doyle used Casement as an inspiration for the character of Lord John Roxton in the 1912 novel The Lost World.
• W. B. Yeats wrote a poem demanding the return of Casement's remains, with the refrain, "The ghost of Roger Casement/Is beating on the door". Brendan Behan refers to the poem in his autobiographical novel Borstal Boy, and speaks of the respect his family had for Casement, noting that his older brother Rory Behan had been named after Casement.
• Casement is the subject of the play Prisoner of the Crown, which was written by Richard Herd and Richard Stockton and which premiered at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on 15 February 1972.
• Roger Casement appears in the "Giant's Causeway" of French Academician Pierre Benoit in 1922, telling of his capture and execution and presenting him as a noble martyr and scapegoat.
• In 1968 a German TV series Sir Roger Casement was made about his time in Germany during the First World War.
• In 1973, BBC Radio aired a critically acclaimed radio play by David Rudkin about the life of Casement, called Cries from Casement as His Bones are Brought to Dublin.
• On November 3, 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa (2010 Nobel Laureate in Literature) published El sueño del celta, or The Dream of the Celt, based on Casement's life.
• American Noise Rock band ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead released an instrumental entitled ""The Betrayal of Roger Casement & the Irish Brigade" on their 2008 Festival Thyme EP.