There is an enormous range of these large, colourful banners and they show pictorially the cultural reference points of the Protestant people. A major grievance in recent years was the BBC’s decision early in the 1980s to scrap television coverage of the Belfast Twelfth because, Orangemen think, of nationalist sensibilities. Even though in recent years there has been truncated coverage, what has been lost is the informed commentary on banners and bands that put the parade and the Orange Order in its historical and cultural context. These days, the media are interested in parades only if they provoke violence.
An Ulster Society survey identified thirteen categories of Orange banner. Many Orange and virtually all Black banners are BIBLICAL, the majority being Old Testament. The BUILDINGS represented are usually of local significance; most often they are churches. A typical example of the secular is Derrymore House, Bessbrook, carried by the local lodge because the Act of Union was signed there in 1800. The HOME RULE category depicts Ulster Protestantism in its most ‘no-surrender’ mode, with paintings of, for instance, the formation of the Ulster Volunteers. The HISTORICAL category covers events relating to the foundation of the Orange Order and the INDUSTRIAL particularly to the proud Belfast industrial past. Both WORLD WARS are there, the most moving image being that of the 36th Ulster Division, so many of whom were slaughtered at the Somme.
You have to be dead to be on a banner: popular PERSONALITIES are Winston Churchill, Oliver Cromwell and Sir James Craig, the long-serving prime minister of Northern Ireland: brethren murdered by the IRA during the TROUBLES sometimes become the subject of their lodge’s banner. Martin Luther is the reformer most often seen on REFORMATION banners and probably Queen Victoria among the ROYALTY; a very evocative banner in the latter category is that of the Great Northern True Blues, a Sandy Row railway employees’ lodge, showing a train festooned with union flags carrying King Edward VII to Belfast.
The largest category, of course, relate to the WILLIAMITE period; for example, the Mountjoy charging the boom at Derry, William crossing the Boyne, or the battle of Aughrim. All Apprentice Boys’ banners are to do with the Siege of Derry. Remaining banners are scooped up under the categories of OLD FLAGS OR BANNERS and MISCELLANEOUS, which include a British bulldog and Britannia.
Banners are as carefully cherished as collarettes. David Jones, who until his teens lived in Carleton Street Orange Hall – home to many Orange lodges, including Portadown district lodge,
Royal Black preceptories and Apprentice Boys clubs – where his father was caretaker, recalled one of the procedures before the Twelfth:
One of his other tasks was to extract the lodge banners from their storage places where they had been carefully laid aside from the previous year. Following the last Twelfth each banner would have been rolled up and placed inside its own long wooden box. These boxes would be taken out of their storage places, by now covered with a liberal sprinkling of a year’s undisturbed dust. When opened the banner would be unrolled, hooked on to the banner poles and carefully rested against the wall in one of the largest rooms in the building. The brass or chromium fittings that sat atop the banner poles would be polished until they gleamed. The early hanging of the banners also allowed time for any creases that had formed during storage in the material to fall out. With mention of the banner poles, quite often one of the problems faced was finding them, depending on who had put them away or where they had been left.
One of my lasting impressions of that era is the banners. I can well remember as a small child looking up at them – somewhat in awe all assembled in the one place, and each with its own unique large oil-painted scene. This was my art gallery. Before me were displayed likenesses of King William III on horseback, or arriving at Carrickfergus. A painting of Queen Victoria being presented with a Bible by one of her colonial subjects, the banner bearing the legend ‘The Secret of England’s Greatness’. Numerous biblical scenes were evident, amongst them Noah portrayed on the Ark with a bird returning with a twig in its beak. Then there were the banners depicting the ‘Bible and Crown’ and past remembered Orangemen of the area with stern emotionless faces. Still and silent they towered above me. In a few days I knew this quiet moment would change as the banners would take on a life of their own when they would leave the hall on parade. Once outside the banners, held high, would float in the breeze and seen from a distance the tops of the banner poles would bob up and down as they were carried in the procession.
The music
John Moulden, a lifelong student of traditional songs, points out that Orange culture can only be understood in the context of a wide range of music, stretching back through the centuries and across much of Britain, Ireland and Europe, belonging to a genre of songs dealing with everyday matters and events. Even the most strongly expressed Protestant sentiments in local Orange songs have at one time or another been voiced in parts of English traditional music.
Orange songs are of different kinds. Some of them are openly objectionable. Some of them refer to elements of Catholic doctrine in an opprobrious way. Some of them refer to party fights and give very very one-sided and objectionable accounts. On the other hand, the accounts of those same fights given by the other side are equally offensive.
Certainly many of the songs have been based – almost parodied – upon nationalist songs. There are some songs that are, for instance, similar in form to ‘The Wearing of the Green’. ‘The Sash’ – although not based on a sectarian Irish song – is based on an Irish song of possibly music-hall origin called ‘The Hat My Father Wore’ … They often see themselves as David, up against the world – the English establishment, the rest of Ireland …
There are large numbers of songs which look at incidents in Irish history … where Protestants were injured, assaulted or killed. And there are large numbers of songs which say, ‘Watch out. If you are not on your guard, these things are going to happen again.’
One old Orangeman whom I had the honour to talk to in his last years about songs and Orange songs in general was a pillar of his local Orange lodge and in fact a pillar of the district. He was a lecturer on Orange traditions and history and when I went and asked him, he refused to sing Orange songs to me on the grounds that he as an Orangeman had taken an oath to give offence to no man.
Moulden picked out ‘The Ould Orange Flute’ – a ‘rather amusing, fun-poking look at the distinctiveness between two groups of people’ – as being one of those songs that Catholics enjoy. (Indeed he suspects it may well have originated among Catholics as a satirical pastiche of Orange songs.)
In the County Tyrone, near the town of Dungannon,
Where many a ruction myself had a hand in, Bob Williamson lived – a weaver by trade, And all of us thought him a stout Orange blade. On the twelfth of July as it yearly did come, Bob played on the flute to the sound of the drum, You may talk of your harp, your piano, your lute, But nothing could sound like the ould Orange flute.
But this treacherous scoundrel took us all in,
For he married a Papish called Bridgit McGinn, And turned Papish himself, and forsook the ould cause, That gave us our freedom, religion and laws. Now the boys in the townland made some noise upon it, And Bob had to fly to the province of Connaught; He fled with his wife and his fixings to boot, Along with the others the ould Orange flute.
At the chapel on Sundays to atone for past deeds,
He said Paters and Aves and counted his beads, Till after some time at the Priest’s own desire, He went with his ould flute to play in the choir; He went with his ould flute to play in the Mass, But the instrument shivered and sighed, ‘Oh, alas!’ And for all he could blow, though it made a great noise, The ould flute would play only, ‘The Protestant Boys’.
Bob jumped and he started and got into a splutter,
And