List of flags of Ireland

[citation needed] The arms of the nine-county province of Ulster form a composite achievement, combining the heraldic symbols of two of that province's best known families, namely the cross of de Burgo and the dexter hand of O Neill (Ua Néill, later Ó Néill) Kings of Ailech and Tír Eoghan.

A crown of the type now known as antique Irish forms an integral element of a thirteenth-century crozier head found near Cormac's Chapel on the Rock of Cashel.

In the case of the 'king-bishops' of Cashel, the placing of the antique crown on their crozier was a symbolic assertion of their right to the political sovereignty of Munster.

Possibly the oldest and certainly the most celebrated instance of the use of the harp device on a green field was the flag of Owen Roe O'Neill.

It is recorded that his ship, the St Francis, as she lay at anchor at Dunkirk, flew from her mast top 'the Irish harp in a green field, in a flag'.