Green Flag of Ireland
As well as the coat of arms, which shows the harp on an Azure (blue) field, Ireland has long been associated with a flag also bearing the harp. This flag is identical to the coat of arms but with a green field, rather than blue, and is blazoned Vert, a Harp Or, stringed Argent (a gold harp with silver strings on a green field).
The earliest-known record of the green flag is attributed to Eoghan Ruadh Ó Néill, a 17th century exile and soldier in the Irish brigade of the Spanish army. His ship, the St. Francis, is recorded as flying from her mast top "the Irish harp in a green field, in a flag" as she lay at anchor at Dunkirk en route to Ireland. Ó Néill was returning to Ireland in order to participate in the Irish Confederate Wars (1641—1653), during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (a series of civil wars engulfing England, Ireland and Scotland), where he would contribute as a leading general. Variants of the green flag were flown by United Irishmen during the 1798 Rebellion and by the Irish émigré in foreign armys, such as the Irish Brigade of the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865) and Saint Patrick's Battalion in the Mexican Army during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848).
Although the Kingdom of Ireland never had an official flag, this flag is recorded as the flag of Ireland by 18th and 19th century sources. It was used as a naval jack and as the basis for the unofficial green ensign of Ireland, particularly during the 18th and 19th centuries. The flag is identical to the arms of the province of Leinster. It is believed that the Leinster arms are derrived from it, rather than the other way around.
Read more about this topic: Arms Of Ireland
Famous quotes containing the words green, flag and/or ireland:
“But we still remember ... above all, the cool, free aspect of the wild apple trees, generously proffering their fruit to us, though still green and crude,—the hard, round, glossy fruit, which, if not ripe, still was not poison, but New English too, brought hither, its ancestors, by ours once. These gentler trees imparted a half-civilized and twilight aspect to the otherwise barbarian land.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“My dream is that as the years go by and the world knows more and more of America, it ... will turn to America for those moral inspirations that lie at the basis of all freedom ... that America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights, and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“There is no topic ... more soporific and generally boring than the topic of Ireland as Ireland, as a nation.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)