County Cork tartans and Arsenal tartan

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

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.

When the treaty was being negotiated, both governments (and Carson) referred to what is now NI as "the Ulster Province" in all of their minutes and notes (this was because Donegal is also in the north of Ireland, but was to remain part of the newly formed nation of Ireland. That, as you noted, was why I used the quotation marks in my original posting.

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 )

I have never suggested that Ireland is part of the Commonwealth. Further, there was no "automatic" action that took Ireland out of the Commonwealth. Actually, it was at the Commonwealth conference in Canada that Ireland's representative made the unilateral, and totally personal, decision--without the knowledge or consultation of the government in Ireland--to announce that Ireland was leaving the Commonwealth. He then walked out of the conference and headed into the bar.

In Dublin the Government was stunned, but chose to back that pronouncement anyway, rather than embarrass Mr. De Valera by repudiating the action of one of his closest friends. The fact that Ireland was a republic had nothing (or perhaps everything?) to do with it.

Granted, the Meath province is long outdated, I only mentioned it to explain the apparent inconsistancy of the provinces being called "fifths" in Irish.

Blame that on the "Kingdom of Kerry"

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.

I think the best reference would be the very popularity of the shields depicting the arms of the four kingdoms/provinces that adorned all sorts of Irish souvenirs in the late 19th and early 20th century. Prior to about my (arbitrarily) chosen date of c.1910 the bulk of these tend to be labeled as "Four Kingdoms". I know, for a fact, that that is how Denis O'Conor Don always referred to them, but then perhaps he had a more vested interest in them than did many others!

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.

Jeasus, but even the Pope in Rome himself couldn't keep a Wicklow man and a Westmeath man from taking politics-- or is that boloxtics?

Slan!