Estyn Evans, once went into the subject in meticulous detail and found a depth of meaning in it that few who used the phrase could have suspected. One the other other hand (no pun intended), that great student of Ireland’s idiosyncrasies, ( QUB Professor) E. Whichever foot they dug with it, it was the “wrong” one. The point in both cases was that they were the minority. In the South, it is Protestants who are (or were) said to the dig with the left. In the North, the same claim was made of Catholics. The foot question has its contradictions too. But I suppose there is a certain logic in that. You see lefty versions on, for example, old cap badges of the Irish Citizen Army. Not that the Red Hand is entirely the property of Ulster. It used to symbolise Ireland in general. And again, this could be ambidextrous. But then again, as far as I can see, loyalist murals, just like GAA insignia, tend to go with with the right. Maybe that explains some of the left-hand versions in Belfast. The first to touch it would win, so within sight of the finish, the most committed of the trio chopped his hand off and threw it ashore, a result that withstood the subsequent stewards’ inquiry.īy the law of averages (and most versions of the story), however, it was the invader’s right hand that did the chopping, and therefore his left that claimed the reward. The alternative is the prehistorical myth of the Iberian invaders, promised Ulster as the prize in a boat race. One is religious, referring to the hand of God (His right, invariably), a meaning mentioned in Milton’s Paradise Lost and a Nick Cave song, Red Right Hand, among other places. This is all the more surprising given that there are two competing explanations for the symbol’s origins. And on both sides, it’s usually the right hand ( dexter) that’s depicted, although there are quite a few left hands scattered around Belfast on coats of arms and other insignia, with apparently equal indifference. Unlike most emblems, it straddles the political and sectarian divide. “I’m thinking mainly of the Red Hand, that ubiquitous symbol of Ulster.
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