The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-04-05
SHAMROCK AND HARP.
Ancient and Modern Emblems of the
 Lovely Green Isle.

Ancient and Modern Emblems of the
 Lovely Green Isle.
 Some orators are wont to refer fer wildly, says the New York Sun, to the green flag as the ancient banner of Ireland.' Probably, however, St. Pat rick and his contemporaries never saw a green flag in Ireland nor did the Irish for about IA centuries after him.
 There Is no mention of q green flag in the Irish annals previous to 17OS. At the celebrated fight known as .'the bat tie of the Boyne'' the opposing armies of King William and his father-in- law. King James wore red unifor ms In order to avoid killing one. another by mistake in the confusion of battle Will liam's men struck green leaves in their hats. while those of James wore white paper rosettes, representing the white rose of York. Thus, by strange irony, the Orangemen were the first wearers of the green in Ireland. The famous Irish brigade in the service of France were red uniforms; some of them were therefore mistaken for English and cut down by the French cavalry in the melee when the brigade's charge gained the victory at Fontenoy
 The Irish insurgents of 179S, Catolics and Protestants, were the first to adopt green as the national color of Ireland. It had been previously proposed as the color of hope by Camille Desmou- lins to the French revolutionists, but he was outvoted in favor of the tricolor. The Wexford insurgents at first used rt{ " <,f l yellow and green-but eventually they 1 fixed on green. which, with baptism of heroic blood, was then firmly and per l manently established as the national color of Ireland. There have been some fantastic and wholly unsuccessful at | tempts to introduce a green, white and yellow Irish tri1-color.''
 | Even the antiquity of the shamrock | as an Irish national emblem is assailed The learned and painstaking Dr. P. w Joyce says:
 Tt is not easy to determine the origir of the Irish custom of wearing a buncl ! of shamrocks in the hat on St. Patrick Day-the 17th of March. According tc l the popular belief, it commentaries ar incident in the life of St. Patrick-that on certain occasion, when he was ex, blaming the mystery of the Trinity to the pagan Irish, he took up a single shamrock and pointed out the three l leaves growing from one stem to illus trate the doctrine of the three persons in one God. But this story must be an invention of recent times, for we find no mention of it in any of the old lives of the Saint. Neither are we able tc say that the custom inself is of any higher antiquity; for though it is now 1 observed by the Irish all over the world. and though 1t is mentioned by a few writers of the last 200 or 300 years -as, for instance, by Thomas Dinely in | 1875, who describes how the Irish wove crosses and shamrock on St. Patrick s Day-yet we find no allusion to it in ancient Irish writings
 As to the enblems to be frequently seen on Irish banners and regalias the round tower and the wolf dog are cer- tainly suggestive and symbolic of an cient Erin. So also is the harp, once the national musical instrument-the famous, almost secred, harp that ir Tara's Hall the soul of music shed. A crownless harp was a favorite emblem of Fenianism. But it was an English king-Henry VIII-who first adopt e0 the harp and put it on his flag as the arms of Ireland, or rather of the Eng fish colony in Ireland, and there it re. mains to the present day, a golden harr on blue ground, in one of the quarters of the British royal standard. The red Branch Knights of Ulster had on theil banner crimson lion, which was after. ward adopted as the flag of the Irish colony in Scotland, later as the flag oi all Scotland, and as such this Irish l Scotch red lion on a yellow ground now appears on the British standard diagonally opposite the Irish harp The
 English portion of the standard, by the way, consisisted of King Edwards | three leopards, now changed into lions
 But for ages England had no distinc. | tive national hag-NeW York Sun.