Why bowlers? Because they were a mark of respectability for Orangemen’s fathers and their fathers’ fathers, and in a deeply conservative culture there has to be a very good reason to make any break with tradition. That is tough on those who hate and loathe their bowler hats. There is the occasional middle-aged man who is enhanced by a bowler, but on the whole it is an unflattering article and on some people looks downright ridiculous.
At the other end of the spectrum – most likely to be the Belfast semi-paramilitary world – there are lodges where no one cares what you wear. To my eye, trained as I am in the ways of County Tyrone, T-shirts, tattooed arms and earrings don’t go well with collarettes, but then I would be wary of arguing the point with the kind of people who think they do.
Orangewomen have greater problems. For a start, they can parade only if invited formally by the relevant hosts and if the Women’s Grand Lodge agrees. Northern Irish society, especially in the rural areas, has both the virtues and defects of 1950s Britain. My experience of Orangemen is that in many respects they seem to be admirable husbands, but they mostly expect their wives to be admirable housekeepers at home preparing the sandwiches rather than going on parade.
Olive Whitten, councillor and deputy Grand Mistress of the Association of Loyal Orangewomen of Ireland, has no complaints:
I have no regrets at our members not being invited to take part in the parade. I enjoy standing on the sideline, watching the parade from beginning to end although my one desire always was to have been a playing member of a band.
There are some parading ladies’ lodges, however, who face trickier decisions about clothes than do their brethren. Some turn all the sisters out identically dressed in, for example, purple suits and white hats and shoes, but there are few outfits that suit all women, and the results are usually bad news for some. An alternative approach is to have an agreed colour but allow different styles. One lodge produced a enormous collection of different white hats. Others adopt a more laissez-faire approach, but still require suits and hats and gloves. And the most bohemian let their members wear what they like, secure in the knowledge that they will be properly turned-out in their best Sunday attire.
The regalia
When it comes to regalia, there are clear rules. Ordinary members of private lodges of Orange Degree only are entitled to wear an Orange sash or usually a collar (nowadays called a collarette, though many Orangemen still call it a sash) about four inches wide, with the lodge number displayed in front; a few lodges wear blue for historical reasons everyone seems to have forgotten. Having the Purple Degree requires the wearing of a sash or collarette about four and a half inches wide with a purple stripe. Members of the Royal Arch Purple have the colours reversed: purple with orange edging. Blackmen wear their Orange regalia when they parade on the Twelfth. On Royal Black Preceptory parades they wear black collarettes which may have several coloured stripes representing various of their ten degrees and presenting the symbolic connotations of a rainbow; they also wear masonic-style blue, fringed aprons and embroidered cuffs. The Apprentice Boys wear crimson sashes or collarettes to represent the blood spilt by the defenders during the Siege of Derry and the defiant flag flown from the cathedral tower.
The regalia that mean most to members of the loyal institutions, of course, are those handed down from father to son. ‘When I was eighteen, I joined my grandfather’s lodge,’ said one. ‘And my grandmother passed on his collarette, which had been his father’s collarette. I don’t wear his collarette now – it’s getting too old to wear. But it’s in a safe place and if my son wants to join I’ll pass it on to him.’
‘We treat our collarettes well, because they represent something important,’ said another, who has five from three different organizations. ‘It’s important to treat them with respect.’ (I saw a particularly graphic example of this at a parade where a group of Apprentice Boys could no longer contain themselves in the face of republican provocation. Before returning abuse and missiles, they took off their collarettes and put them in their pockets lest they dishonour them.)
District officers get to wear wider collars; county grand officers have silver fringes and Grand Lodge officers have gold fringes. Indications of office appear as, for instance, ‘WM’, ‘DM’, ‘S’, or ‘T’ (or even PWM for Past Worshipful Master) in front of the collarettes.
An Orangeman might wear no adornments on his collarette other than his lodge number and the insignia of his office, but many sport emblems and badges. (Apprentice Boys, being essentially secular, wear no emblems.) Emblems can be acquired rather on the charm-bracelet principle. The two most popular emblems are the self-explanatory CROWN and open BIBLE, which anyone can wear, as they can a representation of King William on his horse. Members of the Royal Arch Purple may also wear several others, including: an ANCHOR, symbolic of a safe arrival in the afterlife; the ARK OF THE COVENANT, ‘the visible evidence of God’s promise to be with and guide his people of Israel safely through life’; a COFFIN, as a reminder of mortality; an EYE, signifying God’s omniscience; a FIVE-POINTED STAR, a reminder of the five wounds of Christ; a LADDER, whose three steps represent Faith, Hope and Charity; NOAH’S ARK, the means by which God chose to save and regenerate life on earth, thus symbolizing ‘a better and purer life’; and a THREE-BRANCHED CANDLESTICK, symbolic of the light which is revealed by the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Royal Black Institution has many more again which relate to the institution and its degrees, and are biblical and have strong overtones of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Among them are a BURNING BUSH; a LAMB, as in the Lamb of God; a little MAN WITH A BACKPACK, who represents a pilgrim, Joseph in Egypt; a RED HAND, a reference to the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand; a ROD WITH AN ENTWINED SNAKE, which harks back to Moses, whose rod became a snake and then changed back again; a SKULL AND CROSSBONES, which is the institution’s crest, representing mourning for Joseph when he was sold into slavery in Egypt and was given up for dead. The key emblem, however, is the RED CROSS which, since it represents the final degree, shows that you have taken all the others. It is red because Christ shed his blood, it is surrounded by a crown, because he was a king, but as with all Protestant crosses, it is empty, because Christ was resurrected.
Then there are badges or medals, which often relate to notable parades attended by the wearer, such as the Orange tercentenary celebration in Belfast, a Scottish Twelfth, a New Zealand jamboree or Drumcree 1995. ‘Some people stick a lot of rubbish on their collarettes,’ observed a senior Orangeman. ‘I hate that.’ Yet though like most of them he hates show, being by nature a squirrel, he has the largest private collection of badges, emblems and other memorabilia of any Orangeman I know. Most prized of all are service medals, sometimes those of a father or grandfather.
The banners
District, county and Grand Lodge officers are called upon to preside at many services and ceremonies, including the opening-up and closing-down of Orange Halls and the unfurling of new banners.
Banners are a great cause of both pride and worry to lodges. To the ordinary Orangeman, a banner sums up the spirit of his lodge. Although there is a fair amount of duplication of subjects, each banner is unique. Much deliberation will have gone into not just the choice of subject and artist, but the manner in which the lodge’s name and number will be presented and what colour and style and motifs should be used for the borders. The lodge member will know who painted it, where and when.
The downside is that banners are very vulnerable: after maybe a few dozen outings, batterings from wind and rain take a heavy toll. (They take a heavy toll on the standard-bearers too: in bad weather there is a constant battle just to keep the buffeted banner aloft, especially when its silk is weighed down by rain.) A lodge might have to requisition the painting of a new banner every ten years at a cost of maybe a thousand pounds. This will not only impose a financial burden which is serious for poor lodges, but may bring about disagreement between those of the brethren who want a new version of their old banner and those who want radical change.
As that student of parades Neil Jarman points out, while banners go back to the beginning of the Orange tradition, they developed extensively towards the end of the nineteenth century as unionism felt its identity