Friday, March 4, 2022

Celebrating St Patrick's Day with the colour green as well as orange and white


 

St Patrick's day is celebrated in Northern Ireland as well as Eire.

The official flag of Northern Ireland is the union flag or Union Jack which includes the Saltire (X or diagonal cross) of St Patrick which is red on white.

The first thing to notice is the flag of the Republic of Ireland, or Eire, is that it is a tricolour, three colours. Orange white and green, symbolising uniting the green colour of the Catholics, the orange of the Protestants in the north and white in the middle for a truce. It looks a bit like the Italian flag, which is red, white and green. But, if you remember William of Orange you will be sure to identify it.

I looked up William of Orange. The name comes a French town, in the south of France, near Avignon. It was not originally named after oranges but because the name sounded like orange they adopted a symbol of three oranges and eventually changed the spelling to fit. Nowadays the colour orange has come to be associated with William or Orange. 

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Northern_Ireland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland

No comments:

Post a Comment