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Message: [QUOTE="OneTrickPony, post: 2949563, member: 2659"] [B][COLOR=rgb(184, 49, 47)][I]Certain [/I][/COLOR][/B][I][COLOR=rgb(184, 49, 47)][B]Irish[/B][/COLOR][/I], I can well imagine...but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't still be gracing the Irish Flag if William III, and the Dutch Orange, which it represents, was the focus of their ire. For the record, 93% of my DNA is Celtic from the Northwest of Ireland (Donegal) and the Southwest (Cork). [B][U]Donegal[/U][/B] The Society of United Irishmen formed in 1791 to combat British control of the Irish Parliament. A “fellowship of freedom,” attracting Catholics and Protestants alike, it eventually totaled about 5 percent of the population. The group led uprisings beginning in May 1798, often armed with little more than pikes and pitchforks and fought until September when they were overwhelmed by loyalist troops. 30,000 Irish died and much of the land was in ruins. Harsh government reprisals afterwards stoked fear and paranoia—public assemblies were banned and the press censored. More than half a million would flee the Emerald Isle over the next four decades. Most settled in Western PA, including my own forebears. This, of course, occurred not under the Jacobites or Dutch Billy, but under the Hanoverian George's brought in to keep the Jacobites out, and who were a nasty throwback to the kind of rigid authoritarianism that led to the American and French Revolutions the Irish were emulating in 1798. [B][U]Cork[/U][/B] The remote regions of Munster, Ireland’s southwestern province—including the western peninsulas of Cork and Kerry and the boggy highlands of Limerick—were the ideal refuge for Irish outlaws who rebelled against their British rulers, which they did frequently. Cork soon came to be known as “the rebel city.” Protected by impassable peat bogs and mountains, these outlaws and their descendants practiced Catholicism freely and preserved a distinct culture of Gaelic language, literature, song, and dance. Dairying was especially prevalent in Munster, and families typically had many children to help with the unending labor such a lifestyle demanded. My relatives here hung on through most of the Victorian Era, and the starvation of 25% of the population in the famine of 1845-52, when over a million Irish fled the island. [/QUOTE]

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