Question for Rangers fans. Hi folks. I'm reading the new Irvine Welsh book - Porno - at the moment. If you've ever read any of his books you'll know that he makes several refences to Scottish football and he often assumes that the reader has a knowledge of it. In Trainspotting Renton mentions famous moments from the Scottish National team and in this book Sickboy often talks of Alex McLeish, Latapy and Agathe (former manager and players at Hibs) I'm approaching the end of the book............. (stop reading here if you plan to read it aswell as what I'm about to say might be a spoiler) .........and they pull a scam by finding all the account numbers of a certain bank who are Rangers fans and start taking money out of their accounts by using online banking and using the PIN number 1690. My question is: what is significant about the number 1690 to a Rangers fan? I'm guessing it is a reference to beating Celtic in some way but it doesn't give an explanation in the book. Can anyone enlighten me?
Re: Question for Rangers fans. 1690 was the year of the battle of the Boyne. This was when King William of Orange (William III) defeated Catholic 'pretender to the throne' James.
Celtic and Rangers Question Why do Celtic fans wave the Republic of Ireland's flag and Rangers's fans wave the Union Jack? I'm new and an American.
Re: Celtic and Rangers Question Celtic fans fly the tricolour because their fans are either Irish Catholics or Scots of Irish descent (though some Protestants in Scotland support Celtic). Rangers fans are Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist, therefore fly both the Union Flag and the Northern Ireland flag (a small minority of Rangers fans fly the Scottish Flags). The issus of flags has dogged Northern Irish politics since the creation of the state. Republican areas in North Belfast started flying the Palestinian flag near the beginning of 2002 and Loyalists responded by flying the Israeli flag. The craze of loyalists flying the Israeli flag soon spread across Northern Ireland (only a handful of Nationalist areas fly the Palestinian flag).
Wow! Absolutely fascinating. My name sound Irish and some of my family are Catholics that came from Ireland. BUT they have English last names and other ancestors just immigrated directly from England and were Protestants. I also have freckles on my nose and shoulders. How common are they among English? Smith is a Scottish and English last name. Maybe they came from N. Ireland? Thanks again.
Re: Wow! My family tree is 3/4 Irish but is split rather evenly between Catholics and Protestants. Oddly, the Protestant side (Kerbys and Cartys) emmigrated during the Famine. They were mostly the young children of the Protestant landholders in Mohaghan (part of what is now Northern Ireland) and Kildare. With little in the way of economic prospects in Erie, they came to Pensylvania and Canada. The Catholic Driscoll side came over just around the turn of the century, during the great wave of European immigration 1890-1910, when over 20 million Europeans joined America's ranks. By the way, I look hardly Irish at all with dark, brown hair, blue eyes and a roman nose. Go figure. In any respect, many of those Protestant landholders (the so-called Anglo-Irish) especially in the South of Ireland, who had been there for a long time -- many since 1600's after Cromwell or after 1690 and the Boyne -- "went native" intermarrying and adopting many of the folkways of the Irish. Thus, being Protestant or Catholic has very little bearing on whether or not your appearance is "Irish." It mostly depends on; how rich your Anglo-Irish ancestors were, which would then determine whether they married other Aglo-Irish Protestants and/or English ladies of high birth, or how randy, which would determine the number of Irish bastards are in your family tree. The less rich or more randy, the greater the chances that you are blessed with "Irish" DNA as opposed to "Anglo."
Monaghan's in the Republic. However it is part of Ulster, just like the 6 Counties in Northern Ireland.
Re: Re: Wow! Sorry, mate - just so many mistakes littered throughout this. The "going native" thing happened long, long before 1600 - and that's just one in a long list.
Well, it was meant as a tounge-in-cheek sort of thing. Not an academic dissertation. If you have anything useful to add, just chime in.