A day I have dreaded

The 12th of July marks the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, the 1690 battle north of Dublin between the Dutch King William of Orange (half of the William and Mary couple known to all Virginians) and the Catholic King James II.

King William won, which was a major blow for the native Irish, who had been losing land and rights since the time of Cromwell (things like the right to practice their religion, the right to vote or to receive an education). Their disenfranchisement and insecurity continued into the 1900s.

So the 12th of July is celebrated by the Orange Order, Protestant lodges that have halls all over Ulster, including Crawfordsburn. Here's the Crawfordsburn lodge marching this morning:

Behind the (very good) marching band came about two dozen more men in suits with orange collarettes, which bear the number of their Crawfordsburn lodge and a range of badges showing the person’s positions in the lodge.

I have historically disliked these parades because they have historically marched through Catholic neighborhoods. This would be like marching bands from New York and Connecticut going down to Dixie every year and marching around to remind them who won the civil war. That wouldn't go over too well, right? So the 12th is historically a day of violence between nationalists (i.e. Catholics) and loyalists (i.e. Protestants).

Turns out a Parades Commission was formed in 1998 after one too many battles, particularly in Portadown. The commission has limited the rights of the Orange Order to march through Catholic neighborhoods and ended the practice of stopping in front of Catholic churches and playing Protestant hymns. The bands still play in front of Catholic churches, however they can only play a drum beat, not a march-into-battle type of tune.

Last year, there was a riot when a lodge was prevented from marching down a Catholic street in Belfast. This year the biggest poobahs of the Orange Order formed a cordon across the contested road and the parade passed by peacefully. So that's progress.

As I try to understand how the wheel of history rolls on through my time (via Wikipedia snippets), I learn that King Louis IVX of France persecuted Protestants in his expanding territories, animating King Billy to take him on in Catholic Ireland, before claiming England, Scotland and Wales from a Catholic king. So, of course, once the Protestants are in charge, they then persecute the Catholics.

Kind of like how the anti-slavery north, once it had won the U.S. civil war, managed to lose the peace by letting governance of the south revert to the war's losers. So the south had Jim Crow just as the south of Ireland dealt with Cromwellian persecution for centuries. So wars are fought to right a grave injustice, yet somehow manage to propagate injustice under a different banner. Of course, the south has come a long way in the U.S. (although I look at legislation in North Carolina and wonder), just as the south of Ireland has been a sovereign country since the 1920s.

But in Ulster, the proximity of Catholics and Protestants, and the lingering effects of the Protestant Ascendancy, mean hatchets aren't buried, even after 400 years.
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