County Cork tartans and Arsenal tartan

[thanmuwa]

You seem to be confusing the post 1600-historical Ulster, which was ultimately divided into nine counties, with the geo-political area created after the treaty of 1921 and which was referred to as "the Ulster Province" and was comprised of six of those nine counties, and remained part of the United Kingdom. The remaining 26 counties formed the new country of Ireland, which although independent of British rule, became part of the Commonwealth.

Thanks for the concern, but I am not confused . In fact, as you well know (clear by the fact that you put it into quotation marks) What is colloquially referred to as the "Ulster Province" of the United Kingdom (meaning Northern Ireland) is not used officially and is incorrect (and it is a sectarian term in this context). Ulster correctly refers only to the 9 county region (or geo-politically Northern Ireland plus Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan). The geo-political region you describe is officially called Northern Ireland. But you knew that . See, no confusion at all, especially if you don't use Ulster to refer to Northern Ireland. Donegal for example is as "Ulster" a place as you could possible get, but it is definitely not in Northern Ireland.

And as to the Commonwealth comment, that is potentially misleading. Ireland is NOT part of the Commonwealth. Ireland became a democratic Republic (like the US) in 1949 meaning that we automatically left the Commonwealth (at the time republics weren't allowed in the Commonwealth). The Irish people have had no desire to rejoin since the rules were changed to allow democracies (the rules were changed to avoid losing India when it became a republic later in 1949. I guess Ireland wasn't a big enough pool of resources to change the rules for )

Also, parts of Ireland (the Treaty Ports) remained under British rule until 1938 but that is a bit of a nitpick.

The area roughly comprising the modern counties of Meath and Westmeath was, from time to time, considered as a separate kingdom. Generally, however, most folks would consider Ireland to have been comprised of four "kingdoms" or provinces. Interestingly, prior to about 1910 or so the four "provinces" were usually referred to as "kingdoms", the term "province" gaining in popularity after the establishment of the Irish Free State.

Granted, the Meath province is long outdated, I only mentioned it to explain the apparent inconsistancy of the provinces being called "fifths" in Irish. And also, as a Westmeath man, some of us are proud of the fact that we come from the province that held the seat of the High Kings . I am sceptical that many people would have called the provinces kingdoms, since the majority of the population would have called them cúigiú, which translates as province, not kingdom (translations from Irish tend to go with the closest Latin translation ie "province" rather than the english/germanic "kingdom"). I am however ready to be convinced and would be intrigued to see your references on that.

All this is of course off-topic (but interesting, at least to me ), and I hope I am succeeding in keeping this all historical and factual and steering clear of politics.