History

The Historical Background

So the people of Ulster were and are very different, when compared or contrasted with their fellow Irish men and women of the other provinces. To take but one example, even in pre-history (when fact and myth become a blur), the Ulstermen were powerful violent figures capable of both bravery and guile; study, for example, the stories concerning the ‘Red Hand of Ulster’ or the folk-tales of Cuchulain, the ‘Hound of Ulster’. When the Vikings came to establish a trading base in Ireland, over 1,000 years ago, they found Ulster’s rocky coasts and war-like people far too threatening. Instead they travelled a further 100 miles south and set up camp in the area now known as Dublin City.

The Ulsterman’s spoken language, be it native Irish or imported English, had, and has, markedly different dialects and vocabularies to those in the other three provinces. In antiquity some of these effects were created by the very isolation of the original tribal people. But as trading developed with their Scottish near neighbours, shared patterns of speech evolved particularly in the more eastern counties of the province. Even in the 21st century the Scottish influence is immediately recognizable in the English spoken by the indigenous men and women of Co. Antrim.

Home Rule

The people of Ireland had been governed from London for hundreds of years; but they did not enjoy this domination, and built up an ever-increasing demand for self-governance. These concepts developed from the middle of the nineteenth century with a request for ‘home rule’ very similar to what is now provided, over 100 years later, in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. But constant rebuttal led to a stronger and stronger demand for self-determination in Ireland; and climaxed with the Easter Rising in 1916.

However, mainly because of the historical reasons outlined above, coupled with the fear of being forced to live in state ruled by an intense kind of Roman Catholicism, many of the people of Ulster did not want to lose their longstanding parliamentary links with Westminster. These became ‘Unionist’ policies. When King George V gave his assent to the Government of Ireland Act on 23 December 1920, 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland became the Irish Free State (later the Republic of Ireland). The six counties that chose ‘partition’ were all from the province of Ulster. So this is the explanation of the common, although incorrect, assumption that the Province of Ulster, with its nine counties, is synonymous with the new state of Northern Ireland; and why others use the more correct alternative, if pejorative, title, ‘The Six Counties’.

The nine most northerly counties constitute the Province of Ulster. The long established cultural differences were compounded by the historical events of 300 - 400 years ago – the plantation of Ulster.