TWO stories appeared that in the News Letter (neither online – like the paper’s Saturday edition) today on facing pages were a mirror image of each other. On the right, appropriately enough, the Orange Order was urging the Irish Government to invest in the Battle of the Boyne site, while on the left, Sinn Fein wants the British to preserve the Maze Prison site. No-one seems to have asked if either is a viable tourist attraction though.
However, the Boyne could perhaps prove popular with visitors if it cashed in on its newly-discovered ‘Middle Earth’ roots (and no, I’m not trolling!). According to the BBC, a recent survey indicated that around “one in 10 young people in Britain confused fact with fantasy and said they thought the famous battle of 12 July was straight out of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings best-selling book and blockbusting movie trilogy”.
Dr David Hume, director of services at the Grand Lodge of Ireland, said: “A lot of elderly Orangemen will be appalled by this.
“This survey is more an indictment of the way history is taught than the significance of the battle and the glorious revolution that went with it.”
Even though no-one in Northern Ireland was asked about the landmark date, Dr Hume insisted its significance stretched far beyond Irish shores.
“Had William lost the battle, it’s self-evident that the history of Europe would have been very different.
“Six different nations fought at the Boyne. Louis XIV would have held sway, and the French would clearly have had a staunch ally in the English.”
“So the Battle of the Boyne is a European battle. The other big issue is the way constitutional monarchy and democracy developed after it.
“This is of enormous significance not just to Irish and British history but to the history of the western world.”
. o O (…still, not as bad as the geographically-challenged Orangeman I met once who refused to believe that the River Boyne was in the Republic of Ireland! Mind you, when I was a kid, I thought King Billy crossed the Boyne on a Shetland pony, due to the poor grasp our local loyalist artists had of perspective…)
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