Is there a widely accepted version of the origins of the Red Hand on the flag of Ulster? (northern Ireland)
I’ve heard a few different stories, and Google was surprisingly unhelpful.
thanks
A friend tells me there’s a book called **The True IRA ** (can’t remember author) that tells all about the origins, back 300 years, of a man who infiltrated the IRA and found out all the secrets. Try looking that one up. He says you can get it at the local library, but then he’s from Cambridge, so YMMV.
It derives from the O’Neill family crest. Legend has it that an ancestor of theirs was involved in a boat race to reach a land (usually described as Ulster); whoever touched land first would be declared the winner. Upon realizing that he had fallen too far behind to land before his opponent would, the O’Neill ancestor cut off his own right hand with his sword, and then threw it toward the land. Fortunately, the hand landed on the shore before his opponent’s boat did.
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/images/symbols/crosstrad.htm
This symbol appears on many family crests from Northern Ireland, including mine. Within my family, I’ve heard the same story told about the legendary boat race, only recast so that the O’Neill ancestor is a McKeown (my family) ancestor.
Incidentally, the symbol has been largely co-opted by Loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, although it’s also been claimed as a Nationalist symbol.
There are two different flags. If there’s a crown above the hand, it’s a loyalist symbol. No crown, and it’s nationalist.
And, I’m not sure exactly what book davmilasav is referring to, but I’d bet my entire library most of it is crap. No offence davmilasav.
I’ve always taught the version related by skopo, roughly. I don’t really remember where I first read it, but it stuck and has been part of my lecture notes on Irish History ever since. 
Yup it’s that O’Neil boy and his stupidity/sneakiness/greed or whatever way you want to look at a man who cuts off his hand to get a piece of land he’s not really entitled to.
I think the land was an island in Strangford, Lough Neagh or Lough Derg rather than the coast of Ulster though.
I believe the earliest use of “IRA” in any form, not necessarily even a direct predecessor of the current one, goes back no earlier than 1886.
I just wrote what he told me. He claims to have read the book after checking it out of his local library. Again, he’s English, so who knows?
Maybe it’s not about the IRA specifically as an organization, but when it gets back further it’s just talking about the groups dedicated to Irish independence? All I know about such things I learned from the character Stephen Maturin in the Patrick O’Brian Master & Commander books, but if his history was right, there was violent opposition of English rule and major uprisings at the turn of the 19th century and before…
Irish resistance to English rule goes back to the 13th century.
*During the nineteenth century, many people in Ireland began to agitate for freedom from English rule (not for the first time). The English had controlled (at various times) part or all of Ireland from the late twelfth century on; in the 1600’s, “planting” Protestant settlers in Ireland became English policy. This policy (which involved a land grab) did not always go over well with the predominantly Catholic Irish, who in 1641 rose in rebellion against English Protestant rule and slaughtered thousands of colonists, perhaps over a fourth of them. In response (delayed because of the English Civil War), Oliver Cromwell laid waste to much of the country, leaving a legacy of hatred that has lasted to this day… *
As for the age of the IRA…try here for more information.