Scots Irish in America
In addition to a film of the live show, there will also be an innovative television documentary telling the story of the Scots-Irish.

Concept
This stylish television film (uses the powerful words and music of John Andersen's new stage citation On Eaglet Wing, with elements such as eyewitness testimony, expert historical opinion and imaginative re-construction

This ground-breaking cultural phenomenon previewed in May this year at the Odyssey Arena to capacity audiences of 20, 000 people over two nights.
The television project On Eagle's Wing interweaves the twin stories - either side of the Atlantic and across three centuries - of the Scots-Irish in America and the Ulster-Scots who stayed at home: new frontiers, old-time religion, sieges? and certainties from the Walls of Derry to the Alamo.. King's Mountain to Vinegar Hill.. Valley Forge and the Somme

Filming takes place in Scotland (where the story begins), Ireland and the United States

Content
More than half today's 44 million Americans of Irish ancestry can trace their line back to the largely Presbyterian families from the North of Ireland who came to the New World in great number throughout the 18th century

They came for economic and social reasons, and in search of me religious freedom denied them at home.

On Eagles Wing traces the remarkable journey of the Scots-Irish from Pennsylvania where they made their mark in the early 1 7OOs, through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to the Carolinas, Kentucky and Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and west to the lands beyond the Mississippi. As well as hardy settlers, the Scots-Irish made fierce frontiersmen, epitomised by the legendary Davy Crockett who died at the siege of the Alamo

Thomas Andrew Mellon - born just outside Omagh in County Tyrone - emigrated with his family to Pennsylvania as a five year old in 1818. He would found one of the largest industrial and commercial empires in the world.

General Ulysses S. (later President) Grant commanded the Union Army in the American Civil War. In all the Scots-Irish tradition has produced 17 of America's 43 presidents to date, including .-Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and William Jefferson Clinton

The Scots-Irish brought to America their own building and farming techniques, distinctive patterns of speech (which persist to this day) and, not least, their fiddle music. The latter has had a major influence on American folk and country music.

Among today's stars proud of their Scots- Irish roots are Dolly Parton and Ricky Scaggs