Flags of Ireland - Provincial Flags

The arms of the nine-county province of Ulster form a composite achievement, combining the heraldic symbols of two of that province’s best known families, namely the cross of de Burgo and the dexter hand of O Neill (Ua Néill, later Ó Néill) Kings of Ailech and Tír Eoghan.

The province of Munster has been heraldically symbolised by three golden antique crowns on an azure blue shield. A crown of the type now known as antique Irish forms an integral element of a thirteenth century crozier head found near Cormac’s Chapel on the Rock of Cashel. In the case of the ‘king-bishops’ of Cashel, the placing of the antique crown on their crozier was a symbolic assertion of their right to the political sovereignty of Munster.

The arms of Connacht use a dimidiated (divided in half from top to bottom) eagle and armed hand. Ruaidhri O'Conchobhair, King of Connacht, is surmised to have been conceded the arms of Schottenkloster or the Irish monastery founded in Regensburg, which approximate to the Connacht Flag of 1651

A silver stringed golden harp on a green background. Possibly the oldest and certainly the most celebrated instance of the use of the harp device on a green field was the flag of Owen Roe O’Neill. It is recorded that his ship, the St Francis, as she lay at anchor at Dunkirk, flew from her mast top ‘the Irish harp in a green field, in a flag’.

The old province of Mide (Meath), comprising the present-day counties of Meath and Westmeath, and parts of others, was heraldically personified by a representation of a royal personage seated on a throne on an azure field. The arms of Mide were apparently used at one time as the arms of Ireland.