The Red Hand of Ulster comes from a race to shore, and the version everybody tells is genuinely unhinged
O’Neill’s on Carnaby Street holds a 4.4 from four thousand three hundred and sixty-four people, charges ten to twenty pounds, and it is a chain Irish pub.
And the name belongs to the most powerful family in Irish history, and their emblem comes from a story that is completely mad.
The Red Hand
The O’Neills were the dominant dynasty of Ulster for centuries – kings of Tir Eoghain, and at various points the closest thing Ireland had to a native monarchy.
Their emblem is a red hand, and it is still the emblem of Ulster, and it is on the flag.
And the legend of where it comes from is this.
The race
Two rivals are racing by boat for the kingdom, and the rule is that whoever first touches the land shall have it.
And one of them is losing.
So he draws his sword, cuts off his own hand, and throws it over the water onto the shore.
And his hand touches the land first. And he wins.
That is the story. There are several versions, and in some of them it is a different man and a different kingdom, but the hand and the throw are constant.
The Prat’s mythological desk has assessed the entire folkloric corpus of these islands and reports that this is, without serious competition, the most single-minded act in any of it.
What it actually means
Almost certainly nothing to do with a hand at all.
The likeliest origin is heraldic and much duller – a red hand is a straightforward and ancient charge, it appears across European heraldry, and the O’Neills used one.
And then, at some point, somebody looked at the badge and asked why, and there was no answer, and so an answer was produced.
We have found this in every postcode and it has never once varied. The Elephant and Castle is a cutler’s badge. Nickel is a goblin. The Green Man was named in 1939. Kaldi’s goats appear in 1671. The garter was dropped by a countess who almost certainly did not exist.
A thing exists. Nobody wrote down why. And a beautiful explanation is supplied, later, by somebody who could not bear the gap – and it wins, because a man cutting off his own hand is a better story than a heraldic convention.
The Irish pub abroad
Which is a genuine global phenomenon and which is not, whatever anybody says, entirely cynical.
The chain Irish pub was substantially designed – there were consultancies, in the 1990s, that would build you one, with a kit of parts – and it was rolled out across the world with extraordinary success.
And it worked because it offered something that almost no other format does: a room where a stranger may sit alone at the bar without appearing to be a problem.
Verdict
Cheap, cheerful, enormous, and honest about what it is.
The Flight of the Earls
Which is how the O’Neills ended, and it is one of the most consequential events in Irish history and almost nobody in England has heard of it.
In 1607, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone – having fought the English to a standstill and then lost – boarded a ship at Rathmullan with the Earl of Tyrconnell and around ninety followers, and left Ireland forever.
They intended to raise support in Europe and come back. They never came back.
Their lands were declared forfeit, and the Plantation of Ulster followed – the systematic settlement of the province with English and Scottish Protestants, on land taken from the Gaelic aristocracy.
Every single thing that has happened in the north of Ireland since descends from that ship leaving.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
Someone thinking they should move somewhere with competent governance. You won’t because competence doesn’t exist anywhere.
A London councillor complained that The London Prat was undermining his ability to maintain public deference to authority. Someone asked if deference was deserved.