And Quiet Flows the Boyne

Since William of Orange chased James II across the Boyne water, 257 years have passed. Wasn't it about time the bother and the bitterness died down? July 12 came again last week, and, sure enough, the Roman Catholics (some call them Papists) and the Protestants (some call them Proddywogs) were, throughout Ulster and along its borders, good friends--in a relative manner of speaking.

The Orange Blood. Only ten years ago, on the Day of the Battle of the Boyne, Sir Basil Brooke, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, had said some pretty harsh things about a people who make up 33% of his constituents. "Many of the audience employ Catholics," he said, "but I have not one about my place." The next July 12 Sir Basil recalled: "I recommended people not to employ Roman Catholics, who are 99% disloyal." (Meanwhile, down in Eire, Taoiseach Eamon de Valera was saying: "Ulster's rejection of an all-Ireland union is an outrage which Irishmen throughout the world will resent."

Everybody in Belfast remarked on the change that had come over Sir Basil this year. He was, you might say, blowing kisses at Dublin. His strongest statement was a passing reference to "those would-be wreckers of Ulster's constitution who have thrown themselves with fanatical zeal into a campaign which has touched new depths of mendacity." He added that these people had reached "a maximum of vilification and a minimum of veracity." Sir Joseph Davison, Grand Master of Orangemen, went even farther in the direction of peace. He left all mention of Catholics out of his written speech, and merely interpolated a verbal warning: "And we must ever be on the alert against the threat of rule by Popery."

No heads at all were broken as the Orange parade swung through Belfast. Some blood, however, was shed. The main noise in an Orange parade is made by the Lambeg drummers, who wallop their four-foot-high Lambegs with cane whips 30 inches long. The noise, they say, is like that an elephant makes--but an elephant cannot make it staccato. A Lambeg drummer isn't doing anything at all until his wrists begin to bleed from smacking against the drum; when they see that Orange blood, the crowd, thinking of the Battle, always cheers.

"The Sash Me Father Wore." TIME'S correspondent last week attributed the relative quiet of the celebration to "the desire of the Ulster Government to maintain the status quo, and to the shortage of whiskey." July 12, 1947 in Belfast was not entirely dry, however. As the parade made the turn by the block-long Arcadia Bar, many marchers took a short cut and a pint of Guinness, and joined the parade again as it stomped along singing The Sash Me Father Wore (which was orange, of course).

Mr. Malachy Conlon, Catholic Secretary of the Irish Anti-Partition League, contributed his bit toward the sweetness & light that marked the occasion. Said Mr. Conlon: "No doubt the Orangemen put on a grand show. I'd like to see it myself, except that someone would probably recognize me and try to knock my block off."

At the rate things were moving toward harmony, Mr. Conlon might yet see a parade. In another 257 years he could go out on July 12 and be as safe as a salmon in a drunken Kerryman's net.

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