Starry Plough (flag)
The Starry Plough banner was originally used by the Irish Citizen Army, a socialist, Republican movement. James Connolly, co-founder of the Irish Citizen Army with Jack White, said the significance of the banner was that a free Ireland would control its own destiny from the plough to the stars.
The original Starry plough was unveiled in 1914 and flown by the Irish Citizen Army during the 1916 Easter Rising. The flag depicts the constellation of Ursa Major, known as The Plough in Ireland and Britain, or in the US, the Big Dipper. Ursa Major (Latin for "Great Bear"; orig. Greek: "Megali Arktos", "Μεγάλη Άρκτος") is one of the most prominent features of the night sky over Ireland throughout the year.
While similar to the state flag of Alaska, it predates Alaska's by more than a decade.
Read more about Starry Plough (flag): Starry Plough, 1930s To Present, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words starry and/or plough:
“each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“It is the women of Europe who pay the price while war rages, and it will be the women who will pay again when war has run its bloody course and Europe sinks down into the slough of poverty like a harried beast too spent to wage the fight. It will be the sonless mothers who will bend their shoulders to the plough and wield in age-palsied hands the reaphook.”
—Kate Richards O’Hare (1877–1948)